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PARNELL; 



OR, 



Ireland and America, 



BY 



V I R G I L I U S. 



" Sains poptili sitprema lexT 



Price, 26 Cents. 



PUBLISHED BY 

AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY. 

1 8 8 O. 



[Copyright, 1830, by Charles J. Smith. 



PARNELL; 



OR, 



Ireland and America, 



BY 



V I R G I L I U S 






li Sa/us populi suprcma lex! 1 

V 



Price, 26 Cents. 



PUBLISHED BY 

AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY. 

1 8 8 O. 



PREFACE. 

"Ireland for the Irish." 

The American people of all shades of opinion on foreign 
politics have had ample time to estimate the merits of Mr. 
Charles Stewart Parnell's theory on the means of adjusting 
the relations between landlord and tenant, and permanently 
settling the Irish land problem on the basis of a tenant pro- 
prietary. It is the purport of these pages to undeceive the 
honest and impartial reader, by dispelling certain mists of 
prejudice which a hasty perusal of superficial newspaper 
articles may have led him to entertain. Answerers lie 
under many disadvantages. The false statements of the other 
side have had ample time to fly through the country, while the 
refutation comes limping slowly after, and arrives, too often, 
when men's opinions are already fixed. Besides, it is the 
weakness of too many to mistake the utterances of a certain 
section of the press for their own sincere convictions, and 
even for the sentiments of mankind. Nevertheless, truth is 
great and shall prevail. The cause advocated by Mr. Parnell 
is the cause of the weak against the strong. It is the defense 
of the oppressed and long misgoverned peasantry of Ireland, 
against a system and a class "whose honor rooted in dishonor 
stands." Among the tenantry of Ireland there is a perfect 
unanimity of opinion in favor of Mr. Parnell's plan. Now all 
men are united in holding that when the collective body of the 
people agree it is the sense of the nation, and therefore should 
not be persistently opposed in the national legislature. 

It will be well for England to take a lesson in time from 
this Parnell agitation; for her true interest lies in doing so. 
Neglect to learn wisdom from the active friends of the American 
colonies, the Parnells of their day, was the seed which ripened 



into a mighty republic. Besides the loss of the best portion of 
her colonial empire, that wilful neglect, cost England the 
loss of many millions of annual revenue, and increased the 
nations indebtedness to the amount of some $500,000,000. 

Much as the American people have done by their un- 
exampled munificence to alleviate actual distress in Ireland, 
there is yet a better and more lasting service which that 
country asks at their hands, and which can be given without 
either inconvenience or expense. It is that, in thinking and 
speaking of the Irish question, Americans divest themselves 
of prejudice, and not allow preconceived ideas to warp their 
better judgment. Ireland solicits the impartial verdict of 
America on that English system of land tenure which afflicts 
the Irish people with periodical misery, and compels them to go 
forth, as tearful mendicants, to the nations. This judgment is 
what Ireland especially asks, and what will bear abundant 
fruit long after the existing distress shall have ceased to prey 
upon the vitals of the cottier farmers. Let the practical 
American mind bend itself on this problem : " Whereas Ireland 
produces enough food to maintain a population five times 
larger than it possesses, is not England the criminal cause of 
Irish distress?" The English Government upholds a land 
system by which the produce of the land passes from the poor 
cottier who tills it into the pockets of alien landlords, who 
know little and care less for Ireland. Is that honest ? The 
answer of every true American will be, " Let the people have 
their own land, and let them live by its produce." That is the 
verdict which Ireland asks from America. 

In no civilized country is public opinion more talked about 
and less acted upon than in England. " In fourteen years," 
says Grattan, "the Irish Parliament, with all its imperfections, 
had done more for Ireland than the English Parliament had 
accomplished in a century for England." 'Hence the absolute 
necessity of a vigorous, sustained expression of public opinion, 
in order to effect a radical change in the land system of 
Ireland. That is the object of Mr. Parnell's visit to America; 
and it would be difficult to exaggerate the lasting benefits 
to the Irish farmers which are sure to result from it. 

Much has already been achieved. Seldom has Parliament, 
in its opening session, devoted so much consideration to Irish 



affairs as it felt itself constrained to do in 1880. All that has 
been done must in fairness be regarded as the result of Mr. 
Parnell's patriotic exertions. He lias been the means of 
causing nations to deplore and denounce the direful effects 
whose cause he aims at eradicating root and branch. Misery 
and famine all true hearts bleed to think of ; landlordism, 
whence they flow, he boldly struggles to destroy. Should 
America fail to sustain him, justice will receive another 
proof that her path is rugged, and her friends are few ; but 
whatever storms he may encounter, whatever shoals and 
quicksands he may have to guard against, the day is not dis- 
tant when he and his friends will cry, " Tendimus in Latium." 
To Parnell it is due that the scenes of '48 have not already 
been re-enacted, and that some future poet shall not have U 
chant the jeremiads of this day in language like to that of th 
sweetest and purest of living bards : 



" Sudden fell 
Famine, the terror never absent long. 
Upon our land. It shrank the daily dole ; 
The oatmeal trickled from a tighter grasp ; 
Hunger grew wild through panic; infant cries 
Maddened at times the gentle into wrong ; , 
And like a lamb that openeth not its mouth. 
The sacrificial people, lillet-bound, 
Stood up to die. * * * * * * 
The nettles and the weeds by the wayside 
Men ate ; from sharpening features and sunk eyes 
Hunger glared forth, a wolf more lean each hour ; 
Children seemed pigmies shriveled to sudden age ; 
And the deserted babe, too weak to wail, 
But shook if hands, pitying or curious, raised 
The rag across him thrown. In England alms 
From many a private heart were largely sent, 
As oft-times they have been. 'Tvvas vain. The land 
Wept while her sons sank back into her graves 
Like drowners 'mid still seas." 



Let us hope that Aubrey de Vere may hang up his lyre on 
present sorrows, to resume the exultant epic of heroic courage 
and fortitude, crowned by the glorious victory of peasant pro- 
prietary. 

In connection with Mr. Parnell the words of O'Connell's 
biographer are not wholly inapplicable : " The world never 
saw so powerful a confederacy as the British peerage ; fron 



which it would seem to follow that the tribune who confronted 
and discomfited them must be the most extraordinary man 
that ever lived." I believe these words will not be falsified 
by Mr. Parnell ; but I invite his attention to this noble senti- 
ment of the Liberator, which in hours of gloom may stand 
him in stead : " I care not how much I am calumniated when 
the vials of defamation are poured out upon me on account of 
my exertions in behalf of my country." 

YlRGILIUS. 



I. 

Mr. Parnell's Visit to America. 

" Palmam qui meruit ferat." 

There is no gainsaying the fact that the visit of Charles 
Stewart Parnell to the United States will mark a most mem- 
orable epoch in Anglo-American history. But there is 
another country in whose chequered annals it will, through 
all future ages, constitute an event of singular, if not unpre- 
cedented importance. It is needless to say I refer to Ireland. 
The history of that interesting and beautiful island is strangely 
mixed up Avith poverty and suffering. Civilized when all other 
known nations were steeped in barbarism, it is at this day the 
object of the compassionate sympathy of the entire world. 
But it comes before the nations this time in a manner unlike 
to that it has at aivy other period assumed, and this fact is 
owing to the energy, boldness, and independence of Charles 
Stewart Parnell. He is no common advocate, and he pleads 
the cause of his misruled, unhappy country, amid no ordinary 
circumstances, and in cp:iite an original manner. His education, 
his force of character, and his high social position compel 
respect. His aim and motives are presumably unselfish and 
disinterested. Unless we disregard all ordinary canons of 
criticism, and set aside the common standards by which 
thoughtful men are guided in forming an estimate of human 
character, we are compelled to admit that Mr. Parnell has 
much to lose and nothing to gain by his mission to America. 
Irishmen, both at home and in the United States, are pro- 
verbially suspicious of men who go out of their way to 
vindicate Ireland's cause ; nor is this to be wondered at. 
Perhaps no nation has been better deceived and more cruelly 
betrayed. But the promptings of narrow suspicion vanish 



8 

before the lofty personal character of Charles Stewart Parnell. 
He is, however, a man. He is neither stronger than Samson, 
nor wiser than Solomon, nor holier than David. He inherits 
all the weaknesses of his countrymen ; nor is there any 
imaginable anchorage to which we can fancy him so immo- 
vably fastened as to be inaccessible to the pernicious 
influences of English bribery. Disregarding these and similar 
reflections, however, and leaving the future to take care of it- 
self, we desire to view Mr. Parnell as we find him, as he is, 
not as he may one day possibly be. We speak of him in 
connection with his mission to the United States, a self- 
imposed mission, and one which the history of Irish patriots 
proves to be the reverse of attractive. 

It is painfully true that Ireland has little reason to boast 
of those who have touched the shores of America to speak in 
behalf of the Emerald Isle. It is undeniable that they shed 
pale lustre on themselves and their country, and, in most 
instances, have scattered seeds of lasting bitterness among that 
numerous class of Americans whose knowledge of Ireland is 
derived from a view of the emigrants at Castle Garden, or a 
mid-summer church picnic, or a Patrick's day procession, wad- 
ing through the mud and slush of some American city. In this 
connection Mr. Parnell is quite a phenomenal visitor. He is 
not a Catholic, and by this fact is at least partially estranged 
from the lowest substratum of the Catholic Irish in America. 
He is not an orator, and here again he is fundamentally dis- 
tinguished from nine-tenths of those who have at all times 
espoused the interests, and imagined themselves the cham- 
pions of Ireland. He is not a prating mountebank, a reckless, 
jolly, hair-brained free liver, of irregular life and irresponsible 
speech. He is, on the contrary, a perfect gentleman. He is a 
man of university education, of ample fortune, and singular 
earnestness of purpose. His indomitable sternness of 
character has marked his career in America as one altogether 
exceptional. It gives him a powerful- claim to a fair and im- 
partial hearing from friend and foe — from Irish and anti- 
Irish — from all who love truth and honesty, no matter what 
may be their creed, their politics, or their nationality. 

As to the Irish who have made their homes in the United 
States, no unbiassed thinker can doubt but that they have 



9 

gone over in overwhelming majorities to Mr. Parnell's side. 
They have assembled in vast numbers to hear him. Invita- 
tions have poured in upon liin}. In all the cities and towns 
lie has visited royal honors were showered in lavish abundance 
upon him. He went about, not as an adventurer, but as an 
invited guest. Large sums of money were contributed toward 
the two-told cause he advocates. The argumentum ad crume- 
nam, a powerful test of public approval, has been tried with 
complete success. Thus far as to the co-operation of the 
Irish element of American society. But American sympathy 
has not been wanting. The leading public men of our cities 
took part in the Parnell meetings, spoke words of no doubtful 
sound in behalf of the movement, and demonstrated their 
sincerity by handsome contributions. 

A member of the British Parliament, he was listened to with 
respect in the legislative halls of America. He spoke in 
Albany, the capital of the Empire State of the Union. He 
was received with quiet but significant dignity by Cardinal 
McCloskey and President Hayes. The churches of every 
denomination participated in the movement. Catholic priests 
and Protestant ministers mingled together harmoniously on 
the Parnell platform, and spoke at the Parnell meetings. 

It may unhesitatingly be affirmed that these clergymen rep- 
resented the mind and heart of hundreds of Catholic priests 
throughout the United States, for in most of the cities the 
resolutions of sympathy, encouragement, and thanks were 
moved by Roman Catholic clergymen. The significance of 
this disinterested co-operation will be apparent when it is 
remembered that Mr. Parnell is not a Catholic himself. It 
was a spontaneous tribute of homage to a cause intrinsically 
just and praiseworthy. Protestant ministers were not 
indifferent. They entered heartily into the movement, and 
spoke words of weighty import. As a speciman, the reader 
will recognize the telling speech of Mr. Henry Ward Beecher, 
who, at the Parnell meeting held at Brooklyn, spoke substan- 
tially as follows : — 

" I am in favor of the most serious, prolonged, and earnest 
agitation of public sentiment in America for the emancipation 
of the Irish peasantry from their present condition. (Tre- 
mendous cheering.) There is no other subject that is more 



10 

important to the great mass of mankind than the .question of 
land There are a great many ways, gentlemen, by which 
oppression can make itself felt. It may take possession of 
the Government, and by arms despoil the citizens — take their 
rights from them, imprison them, slay them. That is tyranny 
the most common and obvious. It may be that there shall 
arise in the midst of the State such power in wealth, such 
combinations of capital and monopolies, that the great 
thoroughfare shall be choked up by the few, and prevent the 
passage of the million many, and so oppression may take 
place in the community. That may be more mild in its as- 
pects, but it is nevertheless oppression. And there is another 
oppression quite possible by which the rights, happiness, and 
the life of the people may lie sucked out, and that is the pos- 
session of land. The time is coming when the world is to 
have a new agitation on the subject of land. He that pos- 
sesses the land possesses the people. You cannot put the 
land of any nation into the hands of a few men and not make 
them the despots over the many. (Loud applause.) The 
holding of the land in fee simple by the men that work on it 
is the principle, and shall yet be the universal world doctrine. 
(Renewed applause.) It is quite in vain that four millions of 
Africans have been emancipated if they are forbidden to buy 
land. Now the question comes up if we Americans have the 
right to protest against despotism anywhere except at home ? 
I say that I have the right to protest against despotism 
wherever it exists under the broad heavens. (Cheering.) I 
hold more than this — that there is rising up in modern times 
an influence which we call public sentiment, a moral influence 
which is growing more and more powerful, and which is yet to 
overawe Parliaments and Courts, and to determine largely the 
changes that are necessary for the uprising of the great com- 
mon classes of the common people. We should be false to our 
traditions, false to the examples of the fathers and their wor- 
thy sons, if we did not in some way denounce everything that 
is wrong, and let every civilized nation of the globe feel the 
light of our intelligence and the indignation of our conscience. 
But I need not refer to the liberty of the past of America, 
and turn to Great Britain herself to find my precedent. When 
Ferdinand II. oppressed his citizens, when his prisons were 
glutted with political prisoners, did not Gladstone, to his 
eternal honor, rise up in Parliament and publish the public 
sentiment ; did he not direct the energies of the Government 
itself against the nobles' government in behalf of the op- 
pressed ; and did he not bring a pressure to bear, partly 
civil, partly moral, that changed the policy of Lower Italy ? 
I should like to know whether Great Britain employed any 



11 

civil, military, or moral influence in Turkey. (Loud laughter.) 
I should like to know whether to-day in India or in Afghani- 
stan Great Britain is expressing an opinion as to the institu- 
tions of those countries. (Applause.) I hold that it belongs 
to our free national character— we that arc descended from 
the Irish, the English, the Welsh, and the Scotch — whether 
we have not been born, bred, and brought up in the doctrine 
that anything that concerns the human race concerns us. 
(Applause. ) I hold then that we have the right to throw 
across the water and into Great Britain such expressions of 
sympathy for her oppressed laborers, and the want of con- 
science and justice shown to them as shall stir up this great 
people. I have not a word to say against them derogatively. 
I admit their power ; but I hold that the land system of Great 
Britain has to be revolutionized, or Great Britain will be 
revolutionized. When we were helping four millions of men 
in bondage, without rights and recognition, was Great Britain 
silent? (Laughter.) Did she not set our sins before our eyes'? 
(Laughter. > And when the thunders of war awoke us to the 
atrocity of our sin, then did not Great Britain turn back on 
us and light what she had tried to raise up ? (Renewed 
laughter.) Yet I can say, in regard to England, with the 
poet — 

" With all thy faults, I love thee still." 

1 am told, however, that it is not simply land tenure that is 
the matter with Ireland. I am told that it is religion 
(laughter), I am told that it is laziness, I am told that it is 
thievery, 1 am told that it is the Irish people's depravity. 
Now, I would not certainly withhold the tribute of an ordin- 
ary amount of depravity to our Irish brethren. I suppose 
they have enough to go around. But I call your attention to 
one fact, that from the day when Cromwell landed in Ireland, 
according to Froude, the Irish have been fractious and rebel- 
lious, and never under any Government had a settled and 
easy state of things, which I suppose is correct ; and I hope 
that for another eight hundred years to come they never will 
— unless they are free. (Applause.) I admit that they are a 
troublesome people to govern (laughter), that they are a 
proud people, intensely loving their own land and their own 
ways, and that they are the worst people to oppress under 
the face of the heavens. But bring the Irish out to this con- 
tinent on which they are bound 'by no unjust laws, but have 
the benefit of free institutions, free land, and free commerce, 
and what then is the character of the Irish people ? When 
they first came among us the less educated gave us some 
trouble. Their ideas of voting are obscure. (Laughter.) I 



12 

know not what percentage of them perish in the making, 
but trace them on the whole — trace the green Irishman who 
comes with his shillelah fresh from the soil — he has to vote a 
good many times in order to learn how. (Laughter.) But if 

he survives whiskey and gets a little property, and lives ten 
years in this land, he votes just as well as you do. They tell 
me that the trouble in Ireland is the nature of the Irishman 
himself. I say bring him to our land and give him a chance 
and time, and we will prove that he needs nothing but good 
institutions and good laws to make him as good a citizen as 
the sun shines on. The educated Irish that come to us arc a 
bounty and a blessing, and a light and a warmth ; and I hold 
that their mercurial blood, mixed with the colder blood of 
New England and Germany, is yet to give a race of people 
that will combine, I hope, the virtues of the different nations 
without their vices and their faults. That may be the mil- 
lennium. Then let us hope we are near the millennium. 
Without expressing any opinion in favor of organized opposi- 
tion and insurrection, I call your attention to one fact in 
history, that every amelioration of the condition of Ireland 
has followed the outbreak of violence in Ireland. I do not 
counsel organized insurrection or war; but I do honor the 
effort to make the Government so uncomfortable that it at 
last consents to make the people comfortable. (Loud ap- 
plause.) It is said that emigration is the only cure for Irish 
grievances. I say that so far as we are concerned let them 
come here. We want them. And so far as they are con- 
cerned a Government which does not know how to manage 
its people, except by taking them out of the nation, is a 
Government that ought not to stand. I Avish Mr. Parnell 
may be successful in his mission. Newspapers nor any com- 
binations have power to crush any cause that has real worth, 
and that is upheld by men of pluck and substance. (Loud 
applause.) " 

But the crowning event of Mr. Parnell's visit, and the 
strongest evidence that he carried American sympathy with 
him, is found in the fact that, by an overwhelming vote of 
the House of Representatives, he was invited to address that 
assembly on the subject of his visit to America. This is a 
fact of national importance both to Ireland and America. It 
is of similar occurrences that history is composed ; that the 
life and hope of oppressed nationality is rescued from extinc- 
tion. Some forty years ago the bones of Robert Bruce were 
discovered in the ruins of Dunfermline Abbey. The event 
created a storm of Scottish enthusiasm, which stirred the 



13 

land of Scott and Campbell from the depths of the Clyde to 
the mountains of the Dee; and people not unnaturally con- 
cluded that the senii-extinct patriotism of that ancient Celtic 
kingdom had borrowed a new lease of life. In another section 
of the Celtic family a mournful wail of sorrow continues 
to sweep the land, and the spur of adversity revives the 
sinking spirits of afflicted but invincible Ireland. In the 
spirit of true patriotism Mr. Parnell makes himself the advo- 
cate and ambassador of the Irish farmers, and with rare 
consistency and unswerving firmness labors to make impartial 
Americans realize the perfect feasibility of a plan, at once 
practical and just, for the lasting amelioration of the tenant 
farmers of Ireland. With the eagle glance of lofty states- 
manship, he reviews the whole domain of periodical distress 
and chronic disaffection among the Irish peasantry, and fixes 
the true cause of both in the helpless condition to which the 
people are normally reduced by an unjust system of land 
tenure, and by the vexatious exactions, the selfishness and 
tyranny of alien and unsympathizing landlords. He enters 
upon the ennobling task of breaking down the brazen walls 
of this frowning fortress of Irish landlordism, and asks for 
the cheering sympathy of all upright minds in this broad land 
of freedom. It has been given in unstinted measure. The 
supply will continue to meet the demand. America is the 
natural tribunal whereat to try the cause of a despotic gov- 
ernment against a misgoverned people. As long as this 
bloodless contest shall last, so long shall the hands of Par- 
nell be lifted in suppliant appeal to Columbia, and, through 
the press and public opinion of Columbia, to all the nations 
of the earth, and so long shall the people's advocate receive 
the encouraging reply, " Onward ! nor halt while one stone of 
the unseemly structure remains upon another." Generations 
of Americans yet unborn shall read of this Parnell discussion 
with feelings akin to those which the student of to-day 
experiences in reading Edmund Burke on the claims of the 
American colonies to independence. Before this century is 
much older, the chains of the Irish cottiers shall be broken ; 
nor is there any need of the fire that touched Isaiah's lips to 
predict the glowing enthusiasm with which, forty years 
hence, the historian of America will describe that evening in 



14 

our legislative chamber at Washington, when the cheers of ;i 
delighted nation greeted a modest Irish gentleman who 
fiercely denounced the unjust land system of England. When 
Mr. Parnell shall stand upon the ramparts of the doomed 
citadel, giving the banner of victory to the breeze, one can 
fancy the departing spirit of landlordism addressing him in 
the words of the expiring Clorinda to Tancred : "Friend! 
thou hast conquered ! I forgive thee ; do thou also pardon 
me." 

Together with much warm sympathy and encouragement, 
Mr. Parnell has received from the know-nothing section of 
Americans not a little hostility. That is but natural. A 
bad cause, like a bad man, is pitied ; people conclude to leave 
them severely alone. But a good cause, like a good man, is 
persecuted, vilified, and persistently misrepresented. Those 
who thoughtfully endeavor to cast the horoscope of Ireland's 
future will discover in this partial apathy towards Parnell's 
land theories the best omen of their ultimate success. For 
the opposition to his scheme proves rather for than against 
its justness and reasonableness, inasmuch as all the great 
political, social, and scientific changes of modern times have 
been made in the face of violent opposition. Wellington was 
opposed to the emancipation of the slaves, and so was Peel, 
and so were the Southern planters, but emancipation is a 
fact. 

Winser, the German, who made the first experiments in 
lighting a street in London with gas, was looked upon as a 
lunatic. Sir Humphrey Davy, the first chemist of his day, 
called it " an impossibility," and Sir Walter Scott, writing 
from London, says : " There is a madman proposing to light 
the London streets with smoke." 

The project of ocean steamers was met with a tempest of 
ridicule. Lord Brougham, in the House of Lords, declared 
his readiness to swallow whole the first steamer that crossed 
the Atlantic. 

More violent still was the opposition against which Morse 
was compelled to struggle. His application for aid to Con- 
gress, in 1837, was received with jeers and hisses. He was 
refused letters patent in England, but he died decorated 
with all the honors Europe had to bestow. 



15 

Englishmen are traditionally and characteristically slow to 
perceive the value of any new movement in jurisprudence and 
science, a fact of which the Suez Canal furnishes recent evi- 
dence. The project was stubbornly opposed in England, to 
the amazement of all France. The protracted struggle for 
Parliamentary Keform witnesses to the same stubborn resist- 
ance to change and progress in the days of our fathers. More 
than thirty years after Pitt had energetically fought for re- 
form, Wellington obstinately declared " that he was opposed 
to all and every reform, because the existing forms were suffi- 
cient for every purpose and possessed the perfect confidence 
of the country." But that pompous utterance was both in- 
discreet and untrue. His ministry fell, and within two years 
the Reform Bill became law, having received a handsome 
majority in both houses of Parliament. It has become fashion- 
able with a small class of Americans to develop a sham 
veneration for existing laws and usages. The experience of 
our late " unpleasantness " makes us suspiciously intolerant 
of novelty. When our Elevated Road was projected, the 
wiseacres shouted that New York would be torn in pieces. 
But not one stone of our system has been displaced, and we 
move about more rapidly, yet more smoothly than before. A 
savage attack has been made on " Parnellism " by British 
and Irish landlordism, and the chorus has been taken up by 
(sic) our American aristocracy. But in the lifetime of living 
men Parnellism will undoubtedly become law, while the 
integrity of the British Empire, the true interests of the 
Crown of England, and the happy relations of all classes of 
the Queen's subjects shall continue, not only undisturbed, but 
more powerfully consolidated than before. 

Here an important question suggests itself : What is Mr. 
Parnell's object in visiting this country ? Firstly, to sound 
the alarm of a desolating famine among the Irish cottiers in 
the certain near future. I affirm that, in the order of time, 
Parnell's was the first voice lifted, and the first to make itself 
felt, in presaging the dire distress now raging in Ireland. 
When he first spoke of it, nobody here, and few in Great 
Britain, believed him. He was first in the field. Then came 
all the usual machinery which springs into motion in multi- 
plied shapes on the occurrence of every critical event. The 



16 

clergy wrote, members of Parliament spoke, official investi- 
gations were instituted, the cabinet held extraordinary session. 
This combined action followed apace, but the first zephyrs 
of all this national storm were the prophetic words of Parnell, 
spoken at the meetings of the Land League, when, with rare tact 
and shrewdness, he instructed the poor, rude cottiers in the 
primary right to live, and the sovereign importance of self- 
preservation. If, which Heaven vouchsafe, the universal 
sympathy subsequently aroused shall be the lever to raise 
up prostrate Ireland, the fulcrum without which that lever 
had been inoperative is Charles Stewart Parnell. 

To intensify the force of his appeal to the British govern- 
ment, Mr. Parnell crossed the ocean to obtain from America 
what, in her own horn* of trial, America had sought and 
obtained from Ireland — sympathy, and the powerful aid of 
public opinion. Parnell asks from Americans that which 
Americans asked from Ireland, and France, and Canada. " I 
found the people of Ireland," says Franklin, " disposed to be 
friends of America, in which I endeavored to confirm them, 
with the expectation that our growing weiglit might in time 
be thrown into their scale, and justice be obtained for them 
likewise." Appeals from afar have more telling power with 
those who are apt to trust too much to their fancied security 
at home. If the whole neighborhood congregate riotously 
around a man's house, sneering at its internal filthiness, he 
will promptly seize the broom, and set about sweeping it. If 
distant strangers carry piles of food across the seas, and toss 
it in through his windows to feed his starving children, he 
himself having stores of hoarded wealth, and feasting luxur- 
iously, he will soon learn that he has duties toward those 
children, which, unless he discharge, his own house will be 
made too hot for him. That is the idea which lies at the 
bottom of Mr. Parnell' s visit to America ; and seldom has any 
idea been put forth with more astonishing success. America 
has already done more for the Irish poor than England. 
There has been more alacrity, more tender sympathy, more 
generous rivalry here than in England. The heart of the 
United States has cpiivered, while that of England has hardly 
been moved, The result is, an amount of money has been 
sent from America such as no one nation has ever been known 



17 

to contribute before. Now, I claim that this result is due in 
the main to the timely alarm given by Parnell, and to his pres- 
ence and untiring exertions in the States. Let it not be said 
" he has many adversaries, and they do not believe in him." 

Be it so; he has goaded them on to action, vied with them, 
and stimulated them to efforts which, but for their hatred of 
him, they never would have made. If you refuse, at my 
request, to aid my starving mother, but will insist, through 
sheer dislike of me and my ways, in heaping upon her favors 
I should not have dreamed of soliciting, so much the better 
for the needy old lady. She will thank her boy none tin 1 less, 
but rather love him all the more. Neither shall I esteem 
myself any the less for that I can so easily lash you into such 
productive activity. It matters little what seas produced the 
pearls, what mines the gold, so the jewels are plenteously 
poured into my mother's casket. It will ever remain indis- 
putably true that the first cause of America's unprecedented 
munificence to Ireland is Mr. Parnell ; and those who think 
lightly of his politics will not deny that when Ave behold a 
majestic river rushing violently down to the sea our pleasure 
is but enhanced when we remember the tiny rivulet whence 
the noble stream takes its rise. The torrent of charity which 
America has poured into Ireland puts England to the blush ; 
makes her feel ashamed that the foreign rebels of her former 
colonies should have to feed and clothe the bravest and best 
of her subjects. To put England in this dilemma, this most 
humiliating position before the world, is the second object 
of Mr. Parnell's visit. It has been accomplished with signal 
success. 

But there is yet a third. 

The public opinion which Mr. Parnell asks from America 
is a healthy and intelligent opinion, which, rooted in the con- 
victions of the nation, shall express itself with vigorous 
earnestness and genuine American manliness, and thus con- 
tribute to shame the government of England into granting a 
new system of land tenure — the one true panacea for the ills 
that periodically afflict the tenant farmers of Ireland. The 
result of such a judgment, borne through lands and seas by 
the press, will set all men thinking, and will stir that common 
bond of intelligent sympathy which belts the globe, and is 
2 



18 

the distinctive characteristic of this century. It is not too 
much for an Irish patriot to ask of free Americans, who, of all 
nations, scorn those unjust class distinctions which enable a 
despotic minority to keep its heel on the neck of an oppressed 
majority. 

" The rank is but the guinea stamp, 
The man's the gawd for a' that." 



19 



II. 



Parnell and the Land Question. 

" 111 fares the land to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates and men decay." 

The unjust system of land tenure in Ireland is the fruitful 
source of the extreme poverty of her people, and of the 
famine which periodically spreads such withering desolation 
among them. It is not, by any means, the only source, nor 
would its abolition involve the discontinuance of several 
other real grievances of which the Irish people are, and have 
long been, the victims. But it is the first and principal 
source, because it is by the fruits of the land the people live, 
agriculture being almost their exclusive occupation. Now, 
the fruits of the small farmers or cottiers' industry are barely 
sufficient, in the best seasons, to meet two imperative de- 
mands — the landlord's rent and the necessaries of life. In 
most parts of Ireland the small farmers can barely obtain a 
subsistence for themselves and their families, after having 
paid the rent. They do not own the land, for two-thirds of 
Ireland is owned by about nineteen hundred landlords, most 
of them English, and the other third, in great measure, will 
come into their possession on the expiration or "falling in " 
of leases. The small Irish farmer, therefore, exists for no 
other purpose than to enrich his landlord, whom, in most in- 
stances, he has never seen, and who spends the rent earned by 
the ill-clad and ill-fed cottier in England, France, Italy, Asia, 
or America. This is not a temporary or novel state of things, 
either as to the tenant or the landlord. For centuries the 
tenant was legally incapacitated from holding possession, in 
fee simple, of a single acre of land as his own property, and 
at the present day his position is practically the same. Mr. 



20 

Gladstone's land bill remains inoperative, and the Bright 
clauses are confined to the paper on which they arc written. 
At no time for centuries have the landlords been other than 
Largely English, who drained Ireland of all they could possi- 
bly squeeze out of it, and spent it anywhere but in Ireland. 
Some thirty-live years ago Mr. O'Connell said, "It was 
calculated by an able man that nine million pounds a year 
pass on! of this country : the railway commissioners reduced 
it to six millions. Take the reduced amount, and I ask, 
did ever a country suffer such an odious drain of six 
million pounds of absentee money? six million pounds 
raised every year in this country, not to fructify it, not 
to employ the people of the country, not to take care of 
the sick and poor, and destitute, but six millions are trans- 
planted to foreign lands — sent there, but giving no returns 
leaving poverty to those who enriched. Take six millions 
for the last ten years. Look now at sixty millions drawn 
from this unhappy country. Take it for the next six years. 
Can you, in conscience, encourage this? 

" There is a cant that agitation prevents the influx of capital. 
What is the meaning of that '? We do not want English 
capital. Leave us our own six millions, and we shall have 
capital in abundance. We do not want that left-hand benevo- 
lence which would drain the country with one hand, and let 
in niggardly with the other. There is another item which 
exhausts the resources of this country, and that to the amount 
of nearly two millions (£2,000,000) annually. There is again 
the woods and forests. That department receives £74,000 a 
year out of Ireland in quit rents. How was that expended for 
the last ten years? Between the Thames Tunnel and to orna- 
ment Trafalgar square." Continuing this calculation of Mr. 
O'Connell's, and not including the six years subsequent to the 
date — 1844 — on which he spoke, Ireland has been drained 
since then by absentee landlords of £242,222,000, amounting 
in our money to twelve hundred and eleven millions one hun- 
dred and ten thousand dollars ($1,211,110,000). Is it to be 
wondered at that succeeding generations witness a state of 
ever-increasing misery among the small farmers of Ireland ? 
" But," you say, " why don't they work?" They have no work. 
Land is the only work, or field for work, that offers to the 



21 
Irish cottier. Ireland has no manufactures, no developed 

mineral wealth. She lias exhaust less mineral wealth untouched, 
and ;i water power capable of working the machinery of the 
whole world. 1 Jut there they lie, desolate as the sands of 
Syria. Sines' the Union, Irish industries have been crushed 
out of existence. Before the Union there were in the city of 
Dublin ahme 68,000 operatives; there are not 8,000 at the 
present time. His little lot of land is the only hope of sub- 
sistence for the Irish peasant. Therefore, to secure him in 
the free hold of this, relieving him from exorbitant rents, and 
encouraging him to improve his holding for the benefit of his 
family is the true way to befriend him. That is what Mr. 
Parnell is working for, and to that it must come. The small 
farmer has, and can have, no capital. Therefore his life is 
blasted at his birth, for what is life without hope of improve- 
ment or advancement? If he attempts to improve the soil, he 
simply twists a rope to hang himself. His improvements 
cause the rent to be raised, or, what is more tantalizing still, 
excite the cupidity of a neighbor, who, because of those very 
improvements, offers to pay a higher rent, and causes him and 
his family to lie cast out upon the highway. "But how," you 
subjoin, "can a neighbor be so inhuman?" Because the land- 
lord spurs him on to it, and bribes him to outbid his nearby 
countryman, thus fostering mutual hate and strife, which 
speedily breed revenge, and too often end in murder. That is 
the true history of "the wild justice' of revenge," so unintelli- 
gible to Americans, yet so natural when clearly understood. It 
begins and ends in " the land," and is begotten of the brutal 
infamy of the landlords. Thus it will appear that the "spec- 
ulator," who " hangs " about a New York theatre, raising tin 1 
price- of tickets, and encouraging citizens to remain away, and 
" be sure to be late,"' thus deranging everything, and disturb- 
ing everybody, for greed of filthy pelf, is really a high-minded 
gentleman when compared to the unscrupulous Irish land- 
lord ; yet this wretched class rule with a rod of iron 
over the finest peasantry on earth. It would appear, in- 
deed, that the interests of the landlord were held to be best 
consulted for by the utter degradation of the tenantry. Busi- 
ness men all over the world secure the confidence and affection 
of their employees by gentleness, and a thoughtful consider- 



22 



ateness for their welfare. But the Irish landlord makes the 
slavish cottier believe that he ought to be thankful for being 
allowed to exist. Hence Professor Fawcett writes, in the spirit 
of a true Englishman, that " it has been justly remarked that 
the Irish cottiers were the only people in the world whose 
condition was so deplorable that they gained nothing by being 
industrious." Nor is it the people only that are demoralized 
and degraded by landlord ascendency. The land itself is 
made worthless. " No scheme," continues Fawcett, "could pos- 
sibly be devised which would act more effectually to impover- 
ish the people and throw the land into the most wretched 
state of cultivation." The study of this writer's " Manual of 
Political Economy " would win many earnest converts in 
England and America over to the cause of the Irish farmers. 
The traveler is amused at the primitive simplicity of the Irish 
peasant in thinking he holds high carnival (Americe, " is 
having a splendid time ") over a cup of tea and some " baker's " 
bread, which festive occasion commonly concludes with the 
" squeezing of the tea-pot." The quaint usage is derived from 
the landlord's traditional policy of distraining, pinching, rack- 
ing, and " squeezing " the poor illiterate tenant and his little 
holding to the utmost capacity of their resources. Among 
the peasantry the more common phrase is " skinning the land, " 
which religious people associate with the famous judgment 
of St. Kolumkille : " the tail goes with the hide." But the 
true etymology will be found in the evidence taken before 
" Lord Devon's Irish Poor Law Commission," where it is 
declared, upon the highest agricultural authority, that the 
nominal amount of cottier rents exceeds the whole product 
which the land yields, crcri in the most favorable season. 
When substance and skin are extracted, what remains for the 
cottier is to be tossed out upon the highway, and allowed to 
see his mud cabin leveled with the earth. This horrid cruelty 
must not continue to be tolerated in this age of steam and 
electricity, and England begins to awaken to this. The Lon- 
don Quarterly Review (;i Tory organ) admits that ejection, 
under the best terms, has lived its full term. " We admit that 
to eject an unoffending and paying tenant from a homestead or 
farm which he had held for years, and whereon probably his 
parents had lived before him, and to which, therefore, he had 



23 

contracted a natural attachment, and thus to eject him from 
pure caprice or greediness, even when full compensation for 
actual improvements is given, is a harsh, cruel, and unright- 
eous proceeding, and in the Irish mind is sure to be regarded 
as injustice and oppression, and to be resented as such." The 
writer who, fifty years ago, should use even this carefully 
guarded language, would have been regarded in Great Britain 
and Ireland as a lunatic. This is the inhuman system, to destroy 
which root and branch, Mr. Parnell is pleading at the bar of 
American public opinion. England meanwhile trembles, for 
she is being weighed in a scale of even balance, and remorse- 
fully feels her own side is certain to sink. But it will lend 
increased grace to this certain future victory to allow an 
Englishman to proclaim its tidings, which John Stuart Mill 
has done in these bold and prophetic words : 

" It is not to fear of consequences, but to a sense of right, 
that one would wish to appeal on this most momentous ques- 
tion. Yet it is not impertinent to say that to hold Ireland 
permanently by the old bad means is simply impossible. 
Neither Europe nor America would now bear the sight of a 
Poland across the Irish Channel. Were we to attempt it, 
and a rebellion, so provoked, could hold its ground but for a 
few weeks, there would be an explosion of indignation all over 
the civilized world ; on this single < >ccasion Liberals and 
Catholics would be unanimous ; Papal volunteers and Gari- 
baldians would fight side by side against us for the inde- 
pendence of Ireland, until the many enemies of British pros- 
perity had time to complicate the situation by a foreign war. 
Were we even able to prevent a rebellion, or suppress it the 
moment it broke out, the holding down by military violence 
of a people in desperation, constantly struggling to break 
their fetters, * " :: " * could not long succeed with a country 
so vulnerable as England, having territories to defend in every 
part of the globe, and half her population dependent on for- 
eign commerce. * * * Too much bitter feeling still 
remains between England and the United States, more than 
eighty years after separation ; and Ireland has suffered from 
England, for many centuries, evils compared with which the 
greatest grievances of the Americans were, in all but their 
principle, insignificant. * * * America is the country with 
which we are " :< " * * in most danger of having serious 
difficulties ; and Ireland would be far more likely to confed- 
erate with America against us than with us against America. 
* * * If, without removing this (land tenure) difficulty, 



24 

we attempt t<> hold Ireland by force, it will be at the expense 
ofalltlie character we possess as lovers and maintainers of 
free government, or respecters of any rights except our own; 
it will most dangerously aggravate all our chances pf misun- 
derstandings with any of the great powers of the world, 
culminating in war ; we shall be in a state of open revolt 
against the universal conscience of Europe and Christendom, 
and more and more against our own. And we shall in the 
end be shamed, or, it not shamed, coerced into releasing 
[reland from the connection; or we shall avert the necessity 
only by conceding with the worst grace, and when it will not 
prevent some generations of ill blood, that which, if done at 
present, may still be in time permanently to reconcile the two 
countries." 

But during this present famine England, pretending to 

sustain the tenantry, upholds the landlords, by offering them 
loans on easy terms to give remunerative employment to their 
tenantry. For what? Immediately to relieve distress, but 
ultimately? to enhance the value of the holdings, and then 
set the tenants at each other's throats, to outbid one another, 
and so enrich the landlords more and more. By this one 
single fact Irish landlordism and the English Government 
stand condemned before the world. When famine comes, 
Government and the landlords are zealous for the reclama- 
tion of waste lands and wholesome improvements. It is mere 
trickery. In 187;") there were 4,255,000 acres of bog and waste 
land in Ireland. This had increased in IS?'.* to 4,650,000 
acres! The true remedy for this ever-recurring apathy of 
Government and the landlords is to make the tillers of the 
soil the owners of the soil, or in one word — Parnellism. Let 
the reader compare the land system of Ireland with that of 
the Channel Islands, which, while part of the British 
Empire, have legislatures of their own, without the con- 
sent of which no act of the British Parliament has any 
force, being in their nature, too, constituted independent 
States. The area of these islands, taken together, does not 
exceed 50,0(11) acres, the size of an ordinary Irish barony — 
less than one-third the estates of two noblemen in Mayo. 
But, unlike the tenants of these noblemen, who are liable to 
eviction at the will of their taskmakers, under a system of 
Draconian land laws, the people of the Channel Islands have 



25 

their own land laws and legislative power for centuries, and bhey 
provide for the equal distribution of land among children, 
which, while preventing the growth of large properties in land, 
have secured the division of the islands into small farms, which 
are owned by the men who till them. And in the world there is 
no community where there is greater wealth, nor more widely 
distributed in proportion to the population. Here, then, is a 
system of proprietorship which has converted these islands 
into a smiling garden. They possess a population of 90,000, 
probably the densest in the world. If Ireland had a like 
population in proportion to its area, in would lie considerably 
over 30,000,000. Guernsey alone, with only 10,000 acres 
under cultivation, supports in comfort a population of 30,000 ; 
while Ireland, with a cultivated area of 15,500,000 acres, has a 
poverty-stricken population of under 'ive and a half millions. 
Were Ireland as densely populated as Guernsey, says M. S. 
Crawford, it would support a population of 45,000,000. The 
cultivated lands of Jersey are 20,000 acres, and there are 
2,500 owners of land occupying farms, which Mould give 
about eight acres to each farm. In one parish of 3,000 acres 
there are 40-1 registered owners of land. In this island alone, 
states Mr. Shaw Lefevre, M. P., 4,000 acres of land are 
planted with early potatoes, and the produce is estimated to 
be worth £300,000. 

Does this system tend to reduce the value of land? Quite 
the reverse. Land continually rises in value in Guernsey. No 
land is sold there under £100 an acre, and near the town, 
land in lots will fetch several hundred pounds per acre 1 . 

Yet in presence of such facts at their own door, British 
statesmen oppose Mr. Parnell's system of peasant proprietary, 
as an unheard-of novelty. It obtains in Germany, France, 
Austria, Belgium, Australia, and the United States. Every- 
where its adoption has been attended with peace, order, con- 
tentment, and prosperity. Yet the Irish landlords and the 
English Government have the hardihood to maintain that its 
adoption in Ireland would involve national disintegration. 
They reiterate unto weariness that small cottier holdings are 
a hindrance to the prosperity of Ireland, while the best 
writers on political economy agree in teaching the contrary. 
There is nothing new in this profound system of Saxon 



26 

reasoning. England to be anything must be insular. Before 
Dr. Baines induced her to adopt the Gregorian Calendar, she 
preferred to be at war with the heavens rather than at peace 
with the Pope. In her land system she chooses to be at 
war with the whole world rather than at peace with Ireland. 
Rejoicing to see all nations teem with grape and corn, she 
holds that Ireland ought to be able to get along cpiite well 
with thistles and briars. France, which has 50,000 proprietors 
owning each an average of 750 acres, has 500,000 proprietors 
owning each an average of 75 acres, and 5,000,000 an average 
of 7.3 acres. In Belgium the land is still more minutely sub- 
divided. According to Sir Henry Barron, the average extent 
of separate plots is 1.36 acre. England has flooded other 
nations with Bibles. Can English statesmen remember a 
class in the good Book who " have eyes and see not" ? 

"But," you object, "it is not the land system which ruins 
Ireland ; it is the vicious, violent, and lazy character of the Irish 
people, whose horrible crimes tend to keep English capital 
out of the country." Let us see. As prevention is better 
than curing, and as good government studies economy, the 
easiest w T ay to send capital into Ireland is to leave in that 
kingdom the eight millions sterling which are annually taken 
out of it. As to the Irish peopie, the whole world finds them 
to be directly the reverse of what they are described by Eng- 
land. In three of the four provinces of Ireland the judges on 
circuit last year congratulated the grand juries on the absence 
of serious crime, and expressed a request that the English 
press and people would " make a note of it." With the gaunt 
spectre of famine staring the people, is there any other nation 
on the globe of which this can be said? The battle-fields of 
England, France, Austria, Spain, and America found Irish sol- 
diers the reverse of lazy. The press of London and New York, 
and every city where the English tongue is spoken discover 
little laziness in Irish brains. The yoke of English oppres- 
sion removed from them, those ill-used men become lawyers 
judges, legislators, authors, inventors, architects, builders, 
masons, miners, and models in every department of skilled 
labor. Two hundred and thirty-two American Congressmen, 
in contributing to the Irish Relief Fund, declare that they 
"do this in no political spirit, and with a view solely to the 



27 

aid of a people who are in actual distress in their native 
country, and whose energy, industry, pluck, and brains have 
contributed so much to the advancement of our own." Of 
what other elements but these is true manhood formed ? If 
there be four qualities which especially challenge admiration 
in human character, they are " energy, industry, pluck, and 
brains." What a skeleton English literature would be if 
stripped of the contributions of Irish genius ! But it is waste 
of time to further refute a slander which is best refuted by the 
army and navy of England itself. I suit join an English testi- 
mony to Irish character in Ireland, given by one who knew 
that country better than any other Englishman of ancient or 
modern times : " It will be our leading object in this publica- 
tion to induce the English to see and judge for themselves, 
and not to incur the reproach of being better acquainted with 
the Continent than they are with a country in which they can- 
not fail to be deeply interested, and which holds out to them 
every temptation the traveler can need — a people rich in 
original character, scenery abundant in the wild and beautiful, 
and cordial and happy welcome for the stranger, and a degree 
of safety and security in his journeyings such as he can meet 
in no other portion of the globe. In all our tours, we not 
only never encountered the slightest stay or insult, but never 
heard of a traveler who had been subjected to either, and 
although sufficiently heedless in the business of locking up 
' boxes ' at inns, in no instance did we ever sustain a loss by 
our carelessness." ("Ireland, its Scenery, Character, etc.," 
Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall, preface.) The value of this testimony 
Avill be appreciated when it is remembered that the authors 
of this beautiful work have traveled through the entire 
country, and have sojourned in, as they have exquisitely illus- 
trated, every city, town, and hamlet of Ireland. 

The real cause of Irish famines and Irish misery is the land 
system, and the one effective remedy is what posterity shall 
speak of as " Parnellism." The course of the Gulf stream 
may be unaccountably vexatious, but Ireland is not the only 
country to which it works mischief. It may be muddy or 
clear in itself, but as a philosophical solution of the misrule 
of Ireland it is a transparent sham. Neither will it do to fly 
at the heavens, and weep over the moisture of the atmosphere, 



28 

which specious pretext, besides flinging blasphemy at a bene- 
ficent God, is alleged to throw a wet blanket of oblivion over 
the infamous government that has made millions of the Irish 
weep bitter tears. Let the land system be changed, and the 
men who scaled the heights of the Alma amid the "pelting" 
of bullets, and captured Inkerman under a storm of artillery, 
will know how to prosper amid the generous showers that 
fatten the rich valleys of their Emerald Isle. 



29 



III. 



Parnell and Agitation. 

"There is a cant that agitation prevents the influx of capital. What is the meaning 
of that ?" 

England has a special horror of agitators. The reason is 
evident. No measure of relief has ever been obtained for 
Ireland except by prolonged and persistent agitation, and the 
past is a prophecy of the future. When the people formed 
secret societies, the corrupt press, speaking for the Govern- 
ment, cried, " Cowards ! If you have grievances, discuss them 
constitutionally, and in the light of day, that they may be 
redressed." When they held public meetings to do so, the 
press denounced them as unsettling the country, hindering 
commerce, and the influx of capital. In Mr. Parnell's case we 
generally find an odious adjective, which points him out as 
one to be avoided. He is styled a " <I<in<jcr<>i<s agitator." To 
whom or to what is he dangerous ? Honest and loyal citizens 
have no fear of the law or the police, nor the law and police 
of them. There is mutual peace and love. The guilty sub- 
ject fears both, and lives in constant apprehension of arrest 
and imprisonment. The unjust and tyrannous government 
dreads exposure, for its ways are crooked, and it loves dark- 
ness. Therefore it hates the Agitator. If it were what it 
should be, it would appreciate and even remunerate the out- 
spoken citizen who drew attention to the beautiful symmetry 
of the laws, and the just impartiality of their administration. 

But agitation can no more be dispensed with than the light 
of the sun, or the air we breathe. The course of the blood, 
our mental and moral culture, the earth which produces our 
daily bread, all require agitation as an essential condition of 
healthy existence. To good government it is still more 
indispensable. The very nature of power proves a priori the 



30 

necessity of agitation. There is no instance where power 
and authority have been known to move, except when com- 
pelled to do so, either by wealth, or influence, or brute force. 
Hence it has been observed by O'Connell that " when 
authority and power are interested it requires a more cogent 
argument than justice to obtain relief, and it is only obtained 
by the power of public demonstration and the accumulated 
weight of public opinion." A contemporary of the Liberators, 
the illustrious Dr. Doyle, the most just and discreet of con- 
servatives, spoke the converse of this in regard to power in 
the spiritual order. " Authority is a gem which should be 
laid in its casket and carefully preserved, and should only be 
exposed under the greatest necessity." Who or what is to 
urge, to prove, to call attention to the necessity when it really 
exists ? Not caprice, nor private opinion, nor personal resent- 
ment, for these breed persecution and despotism. There is 
no remedy but honest, public, persistent agitation. There- 
fore the agitator, shielded by no other cuirass or buckler but 
" that innocent boldness which becomes an honest man," 
is the true friend of society. He is the mediator between 
the oppressor and the oppressed, or, more correctly, between 
irresponsible power and a whimsical, partisan, or incompe- 
tent administration. Suppose a statute 4 making agitation a 
punishable offense, and you suppose a " law enacted to take 
away the force of all laws whatsoever." But such a law is 
not likely to encumber the statute book of any nation, for the 
legislators themselves are quite alive to the force and neces- 
sity of agitation when it can be made to subserve their own 
interests. When England became jealous of the woolen 
trade of the south of Ireland, the Lords and Commons waited 
upon William III., and requested the influence and support 
of the Crown in stamping it out. His Majesty pledged him- 
self " to do all that in him lay " to carry out their wishes. 
That was secret, dark, star-chamber agitation with a ven- 
geance. If the men of Ireland resisted with a storm of honest, 
public, fierce denunciation, and persistent agitation, their 
woolen trade, which commanded the respect of all Europe, 
would not now be a thing of the past. Agitation is the only 
legitimate means of redress for the weak and oppressed. 
The people must make power feel that power has its limits, that 



31 

there are things it must not attempt. When Government, in 
Queen Anne's time, was about to force upon Ireland a ruin- 
ous bill, the " Letters of a Drapier " appeared, in which Swift 
made matters so hot for the Irish executive that a reward of 
<£300 was offered in vain for the name of the writer. The 
simple scope and aim of agitation is to make authority under- 
stand that it has its duties as well as its rights, which is 
equivalent to the adage, " What's sauce for the goose is sauce 
for the gander." Let Government do its duty, and agitation 
appears still-born, or speedily dies of inanition. The King 
of modern agitators was O'Connell, and the necessity of per- 
petual agitation was the precious legacy he bequeathed to Ire- 
land. I call it precious, for though of priceless value to all 
nations, it is ten-fold more to be cherished by a nation whose 
liberator demonstrated its efficacy more plainly and more 
triumphantly than any other public man since the Gracchi. 
"Agitate, agitate, agitate " is the principle which makes 
tyrants tremble, maintains the just equilibrium between 
sovereign and subject, and keeps despotism permanently at 
bay. When the Viceroy of Ireland informed the cabinet that 
he could not rule the country unless Mr. O'Connell was com- 
pelled to keep quiet, he ought to have said he could not 
misrule the country while there was one true constitutional 
agitator to be found. The King was more candid than the 
Viceroy when he frankly put it thus to Wellington : " I tell 
you, Duke, England has three kings just now — King George, 
King Arthur, and King "Dan, and, between you and n\e, King 
Dan is the strongest of us." What made him so ? Vigorous, 
ceaseless, sleepless, uncompromising agitation. The manhood 
of the nation maintained it in an active press, and in public 
meetings, spread over lofty mountains, whose description, 
even at this distant day, fills hollow hearts with the burn- 
ing enthusiasm of Tara, Mullaghmast, and Clontarf. The 
mothers of Ireland whispered it into the opening ears of 
childhood ; and schoolboys preached it as they w r ent to school 
or played in the commons, by the " bands " in their caps, or 
the " buttons " on their clothes. Some of us can recall the 
glee of our budding boyhood when, seated on our fathers' 
knee, we were made to feel that the measure of our candy, or 
the amount of our pennies were to be in proportion to the 



32 



vim with which we gave out the household anthem of the 



people : 



& 



Heigh for noble Dan ! 
Heigh t ? <u- the Agitator ! 
Heigh for every man 

That joins the Liberator 



This moral tempest swept the land, lifting up the hopes 
of the people, inviting the impartial to serious thought, 
removing unjust judges, like Norbury, from the bench, and 
finally compelling George IV to grant Emancipation. It is 
this spirit which animated the founders of the American 
Republic. They went about to the nations, soliciting, not 
money, but cheering sympathy, to aid them in securing for 
themselves a country teeming with treasure. It is an axiom 
with American historians that but for the aid of foreign 
assistance Americans never could have won independence. 
The heart of Ireland and France, especially, went out to the 
misruled colonists, who used every means in their power to 
sustain the agitation for freedom. Irish orators and soldiers, 
French engineers and commanders — all contributed to the 
common end. Even the taunts of cynicism and the insolent 
threats of British statesmen goaded them on to increased 
exertion. Fancy the feelings of the sturdy men of those 
days, when Chatham maintained that they should not be 
allowed to pass for their marketing from one province into 
another! and if they dared to demur to this, said he, "I 
would not permit them to manufacture a lock of wool, or form 
a horseshoe, or a hob-nail." What a piercing spur to agita- 
tion, and how it nmst have fanned the patriotism of Franklin, 
tossed in his cabin, as the rolling ship bore him to Europe 
to "agitate " for Independence ! 

All that Ireland has obtained, all that any oppressed 
country on the globe, has at any time been able to wring from 
despotism is due, and exclusively due,'to agitation. 

" Thus the aristocracy, by the hands of their hirelings, 
showered on the objects of their hatred the rage and exaspe- 
ration which the renewal of O'Connell's agitation filled them 
with. They knew that if the Catholics at the voice of O'Con- 
nell awoke, and discussed political questions in public assem- 
blies, a knowledge of the horrible enormities by which their 



33 

lordships obtained their prodigious estates must flash upon 
their torpid intellects, and endanger their lordships' enjoy- 
ment of those trophies of massacre. They must learn that 
Valentine Brown, for instance, the ancestor of Lord Kenmare, 
had obtained those immense possessions which his represen- 
tative at this moment enjoys, by writing a memorial to the 
Earl of Yotness, developing a plan for the total extermination 
of all the Catholic inhabitants of Ireland. That memorial, 
which should have been written in blood, may be found 
among the Yotness papers in the Lambeth Library. So hor- 
rible and heinous was the project which it reveals, that even 
Hains shudders at it, and scouts it as ferocious, and what 
was in his estimation worse — impracticable. So, likewise, 
thought Sir George Carow, for though amazingly active in the 
bloodless massacre of confiscation, he shrank back in horror 
from the cold-blooded policy of radical extermination. It is 
not at all impossible, however, that had the Catholic population 
been as limited in number as the Maroons whom Dundas 
annihilated in the present century, Valentine Browne would 
not have written in vain. It is very probable that when, at 
some future time, population has been thinned by eviction so 
as to make massacre safe, massacre will be attempted. In 
that reign, however — notwithstanding Lord Mountjoy's devas- 
tations of Ulster, which he was clearing with the sword, and 
Lord Carew's devastations of the South — the scheme of Valen- 
tine Browne was not adopted in all its amplitude. All, how- 
ever, obtained vast scopes of land — amongst the rest Valentine 
Brown, whose representative in the present day, Lord Ken- 
mare, possesses in Kerry alone 35,000 acres. The memory of 
their ancestral crimes harrowed the guilty conscience of the 
aristocracy, and made them in the year 1815 tremble and 
ture pale at the slightest rumor of agitation." (Life and 
Times of O'Connell, O'Keefe, Vol. 2, page 212.) 

Now it is this same inextinguishable spirit of nati6ns which 
animates Mr. Parnell. He means to do for the farming classes 
all he can do, and no man can do more. He believes in him- 
self and his cause, the first condition to success, the strongest 
claim to the respect and forbearance even of his bitterest 
enemies. It is no common task he has set himself to settle, 
and he knows it. But he also knows that justice, truth, fair 
play and honest public opinion are with him. Should it cost 
him his life to achieve his purpose, " The soil for the tillers," 
in what nobler light can he appear to posterity than as a 
martyr to such a cause? "Dulce et decorum est pro patria 
mori." 



34 

Let hini brace his nerves, arid gird up his loins, and keep a 
close eye on the enemy, for in their indiscretions and perpetual 
blunderings lies the secret of his strength. " Free land is a 
dream of the future," says one ; " it can never come without a 
complete revolution in the public opinion, not of Ireland alone, 
but of the United Kingdom, which controls the British 
Parliament. Even if it be not a perfectly visionary scheme, it 
can never be realized until after years of violent political 
agitation." (A 7 ". Y. Herald, Jan. 22.) Precisely, but if it be so, 
if it is likely to take years of " agitation," two things follow : 
first, agitation is an excellent thing, and by itself and time 
can work " a complete revolution in the public opinion, not of 
Ireland alone, but of the United Kingdom, which (sic) controls 
the British Parliament;" secondly, inasmuch as years will 
be necessary, the sooner the business is set in hot and violent 
motion the better, for the way to begin is to begin. But, 
" this is no time for the discussion of distant and hypothetical 
reforms. What is needed now is not land reform, but food." 
(A 7 . Y. Herald, ibidem.) 

You are confused, somewhat. Food is needed for the nonce ; 
land reform forever ; food as the oft-recurring effect, land 
reform as the perennial cause. If you are sincere in remedy- 
ing the effect, your zeal involves a desire for the final over- 
throw of the underlying cause. "At this," says Parnell, "I pro- 
pose to keep on hammering, and shall be happy to " agitate " 
with you as to the effect — the existing distress." By the way, 
when Parnell first spoke of approaching distress, nobody paid 
any attention to him. "Until I landed in America, nothing was 
known of the imminence or threatened extent of the famine 
which has now assumed such horrible proportions as to attract 
the attention and compassion of all civilized nations." (Par- 
nell' sspeech at Washington.) " Yes ; but the land can wait ; this 
is not the time." Agitators never wait. This is just the 
time, the very best time, and that is why it has been 
selected. Not that this question of land reform can allow of 
abatement until the tillers of the soil shall be the owners of 
the soil, no matter how effects or circumstances may be 
modified, but that there is no time so singularly appropriate 
for demonstrating the utter rottenness of a cause as when the 
nations are united in deploring and removing the disastrous 



35 

results of that cause. You appeal to a nation's purse to feed 
the subjects of the richest nation on the globe; I appeal 
to their brains, to tell them what they have a perfect right to 
know, viz., what necessitates this appeal, and what they can 
do, without expense, to aid in hindering a repetition of such 
appeals. Mr. Bright puts it in this way : " It is only in times 
of extremity in Irish affairs that English country gentlemen and 
county n: embers will consent to such changes as the Irish people 
require and justly claim." (Bright's Speech, Jan. 23, 1880.) 
Englishmen are best reached through their own stomachs, 
but the next best argument is when the world has to fill those 
of their subjects who are hungry for no other reason than 
because they are too quiet and submissive to the English, 
who rob them of the fruits of their industry. This is the 
outrage which no alms can heal, and which civilized nations 
should resolve to agitate, and agitate, and agitate, until it be 
swejDt from the earth. 



IV. 
Parnell and Revolution. 

" C'est l'Imagination qui domine le monde." 

Revolution is a " big " word. It is to the alarmist and the 
dreamy idealist an ever-present spectre, haunting them in 
their daily " plans," and tormenting them in their restless 
slumbers. It is the right arm of the political mountebank, 
his text and motto, just as the " loud laugh that shows the 
empty mind" is the distinguishing characteristic of the social 
bore. " Big " words contain much of all sorts of littleness, 
especially vapor, with which they are uniformly pregnant. 
What is revolution ? Some regard it as the only weapon of 
the traitor, and some as the panacea of the beneficent social 
reformer, and other some as the pet remedy of the erratic 
optimist, whose method of righting all the wrongs of life is 
force and violence. It is not easy to discover which of these 
classes Swift had in his mind when he said that " a dog loves 
to turn round often ; yet after certain revolutions he lies down 
to rest ; but heads under the dominion of the moon are for 
perpetual changes and perpetual revolutions." There are 
those who hold that, for each revolution of the tragic and 
lawless type, history records ten of the bloodless and peace- 
ful description. No enlightened citizen but abhors the 
doctrine that justice can only be obtained by bloodshed and 
a complete convulsion of society. The higher and safer 
doctrine is, " Truth is great and shall prevail ; " and the more 
invulnerable armor and more effective scimitar for the 
patriotic leader is " Time and I." The word revolution is 
used here in the popular sense, as involving anarchy and all 
manner of social catastrophes. 

Now, it has been repeatedly asserted that the Parnell 
theory means revolution. Nothing can be more puerile, 



37 

nothing more unjust than to talk of revolution, in the 
Ordinary acceptation of the term, in connection with this 
movement. Is the redress of an injury, or the righting of a 
wrong, given by any of our dictionaries as the meaning or 
the synonym of revolution? Is it just and fair to call a 
change or readjustment of the existing state of a system by 
such a name? Is it not cruelly unjust to give such a 
misnomer to a change for the better, an alteration of the laws 
and relations between two classes of our fellow men, by 
which they shall both be enabled to get along better, with 
increased good feeling and mutual respect ? If Mr. Parnell 
proposed to put Great Britain up at auction, and knock it 
down to the highest bidder, there would be some sense in 
the meaningless cry of Revolution. The silly cant would 
have some semblance of plausibility if he had counseled 
violence, or encouraged unconstitutional methods of proce- 
dure, or abused his deserved popularity by goading on the 
Irish peasantry to deeds of bloodshed. But nothing of the 
sort can be truthfully maintained. Neither in Ireland nor 
America has he done one act or spoken one word subversive 
of order, contrary to truth, or derogatory to the dignity of 
the Crown of England. Convinced of the near approach of 
the famine now raging, he cautioned the cottier farmers that 
self-preservation is their first duty. That is the teaching of 
nature, and reason, and Revelation. In time of famine all 
things are common. No person of sound mind will gainsay 
this elementary principle. If the men of Ireland, during 
former famines, had been less dilatory, and more outspoken 
in circulating and popularizing this fundamental theory, and 
encouraging the people to act up to it, and if their efforts 
had not been partially neutralized by the old style of com- 
munication — the absence of steam and electricity — it is im- 
possible to doubt but that hundreds of thousands of lives 
would have been saved. This saving of human life Mr. 
Parnell has already succeeded in accomplishing. Is that 
revolution ? 

" But," you say, " Parnell instructed the cottiers not to pay 
the rent to the landlords." He did no such thing. He told 
the people in the English tongue (some of them seldom were 
addressed in English before) that famine is a wolf, and the 



38 

landlord a responsible Christian man ; that wolves are not to 
be reasoned with, but landlords are ; that wolves will spring 
upon and devour those who resist them ; while landlords, as 
Christian gentlemen, can be requested to call again, when 
times are better. ' If,' said Parnell, ' the wolf and the land- 
lord are at your door together, be generous to the wolf, else 
you die, and request the landlord to call again. If the land- 
lord come alone, receive him courteously and give him all he 
wants, if you have it. If you have nothing to give him, 
because the bad seasons have ruined you, and because the 
excessive rent in all past years swallowed up all, and left you 
nothing to put in the savings bank, tell him so. That settles 
it — ' Nemo dat quod non habet.' " " But then he will send 
the crow-bar people to put us out, and we shall die in the 
ditch." " Not much, not this time ; he has no right to do it — 
Nature, reason, and Revelation are all opposed to him." "But 
how if he come in defiance of them all." Resist him to the 
best of your ability ; you are justified in defending your 
hearths and lives, and if you are butchered for not doing 
impossibilities, the civilized world will get square with the 
government which sanctions the murder of innocent subjects. 
Is that revolution ? Yet that is a fair and ample analysis of 
Parnellism. Mr. Parnell has counseled the people not to pay 
rack rents while they and their children are starving (that 
most cottier rents are rack rents, see Chapter II). He has 
never counseled resistance of any sort to those landlords who 
have made just reductions, rendered imperative by the fall of 
prices and the inclemency of successive seasons. He has 
nerved the dejected and depressed people to a just appre- 
ciation of their rights, and of the material changes wrought 
in their condition by foreign competition. These changes, 
reducing the cottier's income, reduce his ability to meet the 
rent, and increase his prospects of eviction, in the burning 
famine fevers, to die on the wayside. Parnell, himself a land- 
lord, rushes to the rescue, and instills hope and courage into 
the people. Is that revolution ? No ; but while hope con- 
tinues to pour balsam into the hearts of prostrate men, society 
will honor the chivalrous philanthropist who improves the- 
occasion to carry the olive branch into the scene of strife, 
and, while counseling moderation to the oppressed, holds the 



39 

oppressor and the vicious laws that sustain him up to the 
scornful indignation of mankind. 

Mr. Parnell approaches a steep precipice into which he 
perceives a vast multitude of men, women, and children have 
unguardedly fallen. Beside him is a rope-walk, with huge 
coils of rope, and he signals energetically to the despairing 
crowd to cheer up, and hope on, for they are saved. And 
because he casts forth a few hundred dollars' worth of rope, 
the selfish rope-maker cries, Police ! Communism ! The be- 
nevolent man is arrested, imprisoned as a robber, while the 
newspapers, interested in the rope-walk, spin endless yarns 
of attacks against the man who has saved the lives of 
the multitude. What must the impartial American think of 
the Government whose land laws are so unjustifiable that the 
magistrate himself cannot execute them without expressing 
his sense of disgust? I quote from the London Standard, the 
organ of the Tories, which, in its issue of January 12, 1880, 
thus describes an eviction in Connemara : 

" An exciting encounter has occurred between the people 
and the constabulary at a place called Knockrickard, near 
Claremorris, County Mayo. On Friday a process-server 
named Langley was severely handled by the people and his 
processes taken from him and destroyed. He was stripped 
and left nude in a field, from which he had to make his way 
to the nearest constabulary barrack for clothes. In consid- 
eration of this outrage, the authorities determined to make 
an effort to serve the remainder of the processes on Saturday. 
All the available police were concentrated at Ballyglass, the 
nearest police barrack. Langley had been provided with 
copies of the stolen processes and accompanied the police. 
At the village of Curry the police were put through a series of 
manoeuvres, even to examining their rifles and pouches by the 
sub-inspectors in charge (Mr. T. S. McSheehy, Besident Mag- 
istrate, was in command of the whole party), and set forward 
for Knockrickard. They had not gone more than a hundred 
yards before Langley discovered that all the processes but 
one had been taken from his pocket. A constable was sent 
back to inquire about the missing documents, but his inqui- 
ries were met with mingled cheering, laughter and groans. 
Langley's story about the theft is regarded with suspicion, 
and it is stated that the only process he retained after de- 
stroying, as it is thought, the others, was for a man who had 
been his bitter enemy for years. At Curry the crowd that 



40 

followed the police numbered about three hundred men, 
women, and boys, but before Cregawn was reached it had 
increased until there could not have been less than three 
hundred women and about the same number of men and 
boys. It was at this place that the constabulary met with the 
first serious opposition. A small body of thirty-five or forty 
men had been sent forward in advance of the main body, but 
they were kept at bay by about four hundred women who 
stood on the road leading to Knockricard and refused to let 
them pass. 

" The arrival of the main body of police was received with 
groans and shouts of defiance, and cries of ' Where is 
Langley ?' The process-server having been discovered in the 
midst of the police, all the women made an indiscriminate 
charge with the view of securing him and his precious bur- 
den. A scene of the wildest confusion ensued. The sub- 
inspectors drew their swords, and rushed into the midst of 
the women, most of wdiom were barefooted and bareheaded. 
A young woman named Mary Fahy received a terrible gash 
on the back of the hand. Another woman was wounded by a 
bayonet thrust in the arm, while several were knocked down, 
trampled upon, their faces blackened, and their garments 
torn. Most of the constabulary behaved manfully under the 
circumstances, but a few exhibited a cruel savagery which 
was shocking to behold, thrusting at the breasts of the 
women w r ith the butt ends of their rifles. The charge to cap- 
ture' Langley was repulsed, and the resident magistrate re- 
monstrated with the women. ' We have a duty to perform,' 
he said, ' and though it be disagreeable, yet we still must do 
it.' The nien, in the meantime, stood motionless, looking on 
and inciting the women to resistance. A voice from the crowd 
cried, 'We don't want to do anything to the police at all.' 
Another person said, ' Every policeman had a mother like us, 
and they ought not to be doing the dirty work they are at to- 
dav.' A third man exclaimed, 'Let them stand or fire and we 
will do the same.' Mr. McSheehy, the resident magistrate, 
then said, ' Retire, now, and let us do our duty. I should be 
sorry to see a hair of your heads hurt.' A voice shouted, 
' We are starving ; we want something to eat, and here is what 
we are getting.' 

" Again the anger of the women, fierce beyond belief, was 
on the point of bursting upon the police in a second charge, 
when the two sub-inspectors rushed past the front rank with 
sabres drawn, one of them shouting, ' I'll drive it to your 
heart,' turning the point, and actually touching with it the 
lips of the women addressed. The men could no longer 
control themselves, and rushing past the women and con- 
fronting the constabulary, shouted, ' Put up your swords; we 



41 

have but one life to lose, and wB are now on the point of it. 
Better die now than hereafter of hunger.' The police, how- 
ever, continued their march, the women every now and again 
making a rush for Langley. At a village called Oula they 
drew several carts across the road to impede the progress of 
the constabulary. At length Knockrickard was reached and 
a halt was made before the door of a house to be served. It 
was a thatched cabin with no windows. The women congre- 
gated round the door, effectually barring all progress. Mr. 
McSheehy appealed to them to allow Langley to do his duty 
by posting the ejectment on the door. Several voices : ' No, 
never ; we will die first ; they may kill us if they wish, but 
we will never let him do it.' Several male voices then cried : 
' If they kill ye, others will be killed too.' Mr. McSheehy 
said: ' I sympathize deeply with you; if I had a property I 
would ii' 4 <]o such a tiling.' 

" After some further altercation the magistrate ordered 
the women to be removed. A scene then followed which 
almost baffles description. Many of the constabulary dragged 
the women by the hair, threw them on the ground, and one 
young stripling actually struck with the butt end of his rifle a 
j)oor old woman. Several more received cuts on their hands 
and heads, and one girl named Bridget McGorn received a 
deep wound on the cheek. A man named Carroll was 
wounded in the hand. At last the women were removed, the 
double line of police was formed, and Langley posted the 
notice on the door. The police then left for their several 
stations." 

It is matter of fact that owing to Mr. Parnell's timely 
encouragement to the Irish cottiers, hundreds of evictions 
have miscarried, and in consequence thousands of famine- 
stricken people are now under the shelter of their wretched 
hovels, who would otherwise be dying in the ditches. Is 
that revolution? 

" But," you say, " this is all the result of mere legal techni- 
calities ; it does not show any heartless inhumanity." That 
is precisely what it does show. It is the result of malice 
prepense, and a premeditated resolve of the landlords to 
exterminate the cottier tenants. The Bishop of Elphin, writing 
to the Mansion House Committee, uses these weighty words : 
" It is a matter of unhappy notoriety that in Connemara and 
in other places that I could name, advantage is being taken 
of the destitution of the small landholders to evict them, 
and get rid of them, and a conviction prevails among the 



42 

peasantry in every part of the destitute districts that now, 
as in 1847, the landlords are anxious to force them into the 
work-houses, in order to level their cabins, and free them- 
selves from further liability for their support." (Cath. Eeo., 
N. Y., Feb. 7, 1880.) When a gentleman of education, a land- 
lord, and a Member of Parliament labors to check such 
tyranny, and asks all freemen to join him in shaming England 
into remedial legislation, is it fair to abuse and misrepresent 
him ? Is it not the silliest nonsense to call such a one by 
the name of revolutionist? If he had any such predilections, 
he has had ample sphere and scope for their ventilation 
since he has put the ocean between himself and the law- 
officers of the British Government. But this consistent 
friend of the people is everywhere himself. 

In his addresses to the American people, Mr. Parnell has 
gone out of his way to testify his abhorrence of violence. In 
the enthusiasm of the moment a voice has been sometimes 
heard to cry " Physical force," "Armed rebellion," etc., but 
Mr. Parnell was careful on all such occasions to promptly 
suppress the popular feeling. "We don't want to send an 
armed expedition to Ireland," he said at Brooklyn (a voice, 
" That's what we'd like to do "). "I know the wish is a natural 
one ; but we ask you to help us to keep the people of Ireland 
from starving to death. An armed expedition in Ireland 
means its destruction." Nothing could be more unlike vio- 
lence. Indeed, Mr. Parnell has been singularly consistent in 
his vigorous opposition to all ebullitions of such popular 
frenzy. His sense of self-respect is too deep and too strong 
to allow him to cater to the vulgar appetite. It is the intel- 
ligence of his audiences to which he prefers to address him- 
self ; it is the sound common sense of the entire community 
which he wishes to carry with him. Hence the uncommon 
simplicity — uncommon in speakers of his position — which 
marks all his public speeches. There is an entire absence of 
effort at fine speaking. There are none of the stereotyped 
tricks of oratory which so invariably abound in the harangues 
of the popular tribune. On the contrary, there is a plainness 
of speech amounting almost to monotonous barrenness. But it is 
this very sameness, and even seeming dullness of manner and 
matter which give increased prominence to the pivotal idea 



43 

that is sought to be impressed — " The land for the people ; " 
" The soil for its tillers." By this sheer honesty of purpose 
the unselfishness of the man adds renewed force and attract- 
iveness to the mission he preaches. His arguments carry 
conviction by their intrinsic merits, and bear down all oppo- 
sition arising from pre-existing dislike or prejudice. In this 
way a complete revolution is wrought in public opinion. For 
Parnell does, indeed, mean revolution, in the best and truest 
sense of the word. "You cannot," says a certain French 
writer, " make a revolution with rosewater ; " upon which 
O'Connell thus comments : " He would make it with blood ; 
I would make it with public opinion, and I would put a little 
Irish spirit in it." Whereupon Mr. Parnell still further 
refines, thus : " I would fan this flame of honest sentiment 
into a conflagration of public indignation, and would cause it 
to blaze forth throughout the world, reflecting the lethargic 
injustice of the English government, and, by the scornful 
shouts of enraged humanity, compelling it, from sheer 
shame, to abolish the abominable system of Irish land- 
lordism." Such is the Parnell programme, and its complete 
success is simply a matter of time. It will bring about a real 
and blessed revolution, adding a fresh link to the long chain 
of fundamental changes which have signalized this nineteenth 
century. 

Perhaps the best presagement of its ultimate success is to 
be found in the indiscriminate abuse which has been heaped 
upon the system and its author. The Parnell plan has been 
described as novel, impracticable, visionary, preposterous, 
revolutionary. The same has been said of the submarine cable, 
the telephone, and all the wonderful activities born of steam 
and electro-magnetism. When first spoken of they were, like 
Emancipation and all modern legal reforms, branded as the 
wild creations of diseased minds. With the system of Mr. 
Parnell it has fared no worse than with the author himself. 
He has been called all manner of coarse names. His motives 
have been misinterpreted and twisted into various shapes — 
vanity, restlessness, love of notoriety, base selfishness, and 
the like. But such has ever been the lot of men who dared 
to obstruct the quiet, lazy methods of the status quo. 

Few seem to realize the distinction between the aimless, 



44 



demagogical resistance to power which grows with rank 
luxuriance in the rough soil of the masses, and the calm, 
rational spirit of investigation into the causes of alleged 
tyranny or injustice. The former leads to fiery explosions of 
popular frenzy, annihilating everything and bequeathing 
to the survivors only sorrow and dry bones. The latter 
prunes redundancies, redresses real evils, wins the support of 
wisdom, contentment, and increased prosperity, while show- 
ing the shallow groundlessness of frivolous and exaggerated 
grievances. Statesmen and citizens are alike duped by the 
pompous importance of " maintaining the institutions of the 
country." They do not perceive the spurious method of rea- 
soning by which they proceed. Existing institutions are not 
worth maintaining because they exist. They must have other 
claims. This special system does not prove itself to be worth 
maintaining, because you or I think it ought to be maintained. 
It is the chief function of those at the head of affairs to 
encourage and hasten the advent of new and better systems, 
and provide honorable burial for the old. The only alternative 
is everlasting stagnation, or else perpetual Sisyphusism, ever 
straining itself by rolling up, and crumbling to dust in tumbling 
down. It is not necessarily true that this or that system 
ought to be maintained because it is ancient and approved of our 
fathers, and neither is the converse proposition true ; this system 
ought not to be maintained, because it is too ancient, too long 
unchanged, and only suited to the days of our fathers. Either 
proposition may be fundamentally true or false. Therefore, 
the true medium lies in discovering the beneficent changes 
really needed, and introducing them with as much grace as 
possible. It is nonsense theorizing about the past and the 
future. Posterity will have its own difficulties, and let it 
settle them. Antiquity had its own and settled them. Let 
us, by settling ours, gratefully copy the latter, and transmit the 
heritage of lofty example to the former. The shades of our 
ancestors will not return to quarrel with us. Indeed, we pay 
them faint respect by concluding that their ways and means 
must needs be suited to this late day of ours. Do we not 
rather grossly insult them by implying that if they were living 
in our time they would inulishly cling to systems founded in 
circumstances wholly different ? These reflections may not be 



45 

useless in enabling the reader to estimate the folly of styling 
Mr. Parnell a revolutionist, because he demands a change in 
the land system, introduced into Ireland by England many 
centuries ago, and the direct result of which has been a suc- 
cession of famines. "Vain have been all attempts," says 
Alison, " to transplant to nations of Celtic or Moorish 
descent the institutions which grew and flourished among 
those of Anglo-Saxon blood. The ruin of the West India 
Islands proves their inapplicability to those of negro extrac- 
tion ; the everlasting distraction of Ireland to those of un- 
mixed Celtic blood. A century of bloodshed, devastation, and 
wretchedness will be spent ere mankind generally learns that 
there is an essential and indelible distinction between the 
character of the different races of men, and in Montes- 
quieu's words " that no nation ever attained to durable great- 
ness but by institutions in harmony with its spirit." Instead 
of harmony, undying discord, hate, and injustice have charac- 
terized the feudal land system in Ireland, and he who labors 
to make an end of such a disastrous state of things loves not 
violence, but order and peace ; is not a revolutionist, but the 
best friend of the Sovereign and Constitution of England. When 
Mr. Parnell demands this change in the land laws he has but 
to ask the members of the House of Commons to look into the 
history of their own assembly, and they will find abundance 
of precedents for similar changes. In the olden time mem- 
bers were called to the Commons at the caprice of the King, 
a system which continued till the Restoration, when people 
awoke to the fact that the balance of power would be again 
lost, if the King could call the Commons as well as make the 
peers. In the time of Edward I. about one hundred and fifty 
members sat in the Lower House ; in that of Henry VIII. 
about two hundred and twenty-four (Hallam iii., 50). Here 
is a most capricious set of changes : 

Henry VIII. restored 2 votes, and created 33. 

28. 
17. 
48. 
11. 
6. 



Edward VI. 


a 


20 


Mary 
Elizabeth 


a 


4 
12 


James I. 


a 


16 


Charles I. 


a 


18 



46 

Upon the Scotch and Irish Unions in 1706 and 1801, a still 
more fundamental reform was effected in the House of Com- 
mons, which has materially influenced the course and character 
of legislation down to our own day. The history of the Upper 
House is a chequered alternation of changes, each looking to 
the greater efficiency of all the others. Parnell asks for 
what is just and regular from a Parliament whose most irregu- 
lar proceedings have been sanctioned and become the law of 
the land. For instance, in the year 1399, the Parliament de- 
throned Richard II., the legitimate monarch, and conferred 
the crown upon Henry IV., who had no kind of title to the 
crown. Again, the Parliament, in the instance of Edward 
IV., assumed the like power of disposing of the crown — taking- 
it away from the house of Lancaster and conferring it on that 
of York. Again, the case of Henry VII., is yet stronger. 
The Parliament in 1485, after the battle of Bosworth, gave 
him a legal title to the crown, although he had no other title 
than that most irregular law. But the strongest instance is 
the case of King William III. The Convention Parliament 
at the revolution, without any king at all, dethroned the 
reigning and then legitimate monarch, James II. They used 
the word abdicate — but a word is nothing. The actual fact 
is, that they dethroned King James, and enthroned King 
William — who had no species of claim to be King — who had 
no kind of legal right to be King of England, as he ivas, not 
only during his wife's lifetime, but for some time after her 
decease. He had, we repeat, no other right save that excel- 
lent and most efficient one — an act of Parliament. What a 
host of legal and technical objections were and may be raised 
against each and all the precedents which we have thus cited, 
including the " glorious Revolution " itself. Nobody talked of 
revolution in all this perpetual shifting of the nation's 
supreme legislature ; but when an Irish patriot seeks by a 
change in the land system to prevent famine, eviction, and 
murder, then Whig and Tory, Caiphas-like, rend their gar- 
ments, and like Herod and Pilate are " Made friends that 
same day ; for before they were enemies to one another," and 
" calling together the magistrates and the people they say to 
them, ' This man stirreth up commotion among the people,' 
and forthwith ' the ancients and the scribes ' (of the press) 



47 

coming in, all cry out in one loud voice, ' Revolution ! ' " If 
Mr. Parnell will answer them " never a word," they and the 
whole world will "wonder exceedingly." If he will be loyal 
to himself, to truth, and to its Omnipotent Author, he will 
stand by the grave of the present land system of Ireland. 
For his teachings are contained in these words of a German 
thinker who had studied England well : " Never was a uni- 
versal ruin brought about by the concession of what was just 
and suited to the age (which indeed inquiry proves to be 
identical) ; what was destroyed by such means had lived out 
its life. Never, on the contrary, have senseless and untimely 
changes borne the fruits hoped for by lovers of revolution. 
Therefore, let every man who has a share in public affairs 
exert his understanding to the utmost, and lay aside his pre- 
judices, that he may see where it is fit to concede, and where 
to withhold ; and not fancy himself a statesman because he 
can repeat a few phrases out of Haller or Bentham." 



48 



V. 
Parnell and Emigration. 

" Breathes there a man with soul so dead 
Who never to himself hath said, 
This is my own, my native land." 

The friends of English misrule in Ireland have at all 
times strenuously maintained that the true remedy for the 
depressed condition of that country is emigration. To sup- 
ply England with abundance of excellent produce is, in their 
judgment, the natural destiny of Ireland. This theory explains 
the anomalous circumstance that England imports from Ireland 
enormous quantities of provisions and stock at a time when 
the Irish cannot feed themselves, and other nations rush to 
their rescue with money and provisions. To England this is 
" loss and gain," but to Ireland it is unmixed loss. Thus, 
in 1845 thousands of Irishmen died of hunger, while of the 
grain crop of that year England received 3,250,000 quarters. 
In the same year England received from Ireland live stock to 
the value of $85,000,000. In 1847, with the famine at its 
zenith, about 8,000,000 bushels of grain and meal were ex- 
ported from Ireland, and in the following year these exports 
rose to 16,000,000. In each of the four years from 1846 to 1850 
about 200,000 horn cattle, and 250,000 sheep and lambs were 
shipped from Ireland to Great Britain. (See Bowen, American 
Polit. Econ., page 86, third edition.) All writers on politi- 
cal economy abound in figures of this description, going 
to show that Irish emigration cannot be sustained on the 
ground of Ireland's lack of food for its own people. The 
same argument applies to all famines in Ireland, including 
the distress which Mr. Parnell's visit to America has happily 
hindered from reaching its full length. If a country cannot 
support its people, there remains a choice of two alternatives ; 
either leave it, or die. But if, as has been shown, Ireland 
can maintain in abundance and happiness a population 



49 

Larger by many millions than it lias had even in its best 
days, the necessity of emigration and the true cause of 
famine must be traced to other causes than want of native 
wealth. We look in vain for the cause of emigration in 
nature and philosophy. It is not in accordance with justice 
and humanity that men should spontaneously emigrate 
to a foreign country, and leave their own native land to be 
enjoyed by foreigners. Yet this is Ireland's case. Those 
who leave are Irish of the Irish, born and nurtured, as were 
their ancestors, on Irish soil ; while those who remain in 
possession are most of them English of the English, who 
seldom or never set foot on Irish soil. This process is not 
natural, nor in harmony with either the instincts of nature 
or the dictates of good sense. The love of country is rooted 
in human nature, and is co-extensive with the human race. 
The scenes of " childhood's happy home " are the first born 
and the last to die in man. Its guileless memories are a fra- 
grant odor which gratefully perfume the laborious years of 
life, and even soothe the sorrows and infirmities of old age. 
This natural heritage has a special value for the Irish cottier, 
inasmuch as it does by itself for him what a variety of 
agencies combine to achieve for those, who move in the higher 
walks of life. With wealth and education come a keen relish 
for the delights of foreign travel, and the fitful surprises of 
adventure, by which most people can contrive to feel at home 
in the whole world. International duties and relations, 
whether of commerce or kindred, produce similar bracing 
results. But with the humble Irish peasant these agreeable 
experiences have no place. For him there is but one world, one 
sphere, one central point whereat all the memories of the past, 
the associations of the present, and the aspirations of the 
future converge and mingle together. However humble, it is 
to him at once his birth-place and his ancestral home. The 
pure undivided affections of his nature intertwine themselves 
inextricably about it, and to have to surrender it, to leave it 
forever, but above all to be violently driven from it, and cast 
homeless on the world produces poignant pangs of grief only 
second to those of death itself. Eviction, the weapon or ex- 
pression of landlord tyranny, is the real cause of Irish 
emigration. 



50 



If the hard fate of the cottier ended with the accumulated 
miseries of eviction, their bitter traces, if not wholly effaced 
from his recollection, might at least be partially obscured by 
the sunshine of better and happier homes. But the fever and 
squallor of the emigrant ship succeeded the atrocities of 
eviction, and the final scene of the tragedy exhibited the ex- 
hausted outcasts thrown on the inhospitable shores of a 
strange country without money, education, friends, or influ- 
ence. During the year 1847, nearly 100,000 immigrants landed 
at Quebec, a large proportion of whom were totally destitute, 
and must have perished had they not been sent into the in- 
terior of Canada, and aided in providing themselves with 
homes at the expense of the taxpayers. The hospitals at 
times contained as many as 10,000 of them, most of whom 
succumbed to disease, leaving thousands of immigrant orphans 
in Montreal, Quebec, Toronto, and other leading towns of 
Canada, to be supported at the public expense. Such is the 
history of the Irish emigrant, fleeing from famine at home 
to encounter death in a still more ghastly form on a foreign 
shore. 

" Far different these from every former scene, 
The cooling brook, the grassy vested green, 
The breezy covert of the warbling grove, 
That only shelter'd thefts of harmless love. 
Good heavens ! what sorrows gloom'd that parting day 
That called them from their native walks away ; 
When the poor exiles, every pleasure past, 
Hung round the bowers, and fondly look'd their last. 
And took a long farewell, and wish'd in vain 
For seats like these beyond the western main ; 
And shudd'ring still to face the distant deep, 
Return'd and wept, and still return'd to weep. 
The good old sire the first prepar'd to go 
To new-found worlds, and wept for others' woe ; 
But for himself in conscious virtue brave, 
He only wished for worlds beyond the grave. 
His lovely daughter, lovelier in her tears, 
The fond companion of his helpless years, 
Silent went next, neglectful of her charms, 
And left a lover's for her father's arms. 
With louder plaints the mother spoke her woes 
And bless'd the cot where every pleasure rose ; 
And kiss'd her thoughtless babes with many a tear, 
And clasp'd them close, in sorrow doubly dear ; 
Whilst her fond husband strove to lend relief 
In all the silent manliness of grief." 



51 

If a father, for valid reasons, is compelled to consent to 
his son's going abroad, and seeking a home in other lands, 
he will sweeten the rude severance of tender ties by unmis- 
takable proofs of regret. But the history of Irish emigra- 
tion proves that the English Government and the Irish land- 
lords, in their efforts to promote it, pursued one common 
object — the extermination of the Irish race. As early as 1580 
they had succeeded so well that, Spencer informs us, " neither 
the lowing of a cow nor the voice of a herdsman could be 
heard from Dunquin in Kerry to Cash el in Minister. " During 
the Cromwellian settlement a plan was devised to import 
Irishmen into the continent of Europe, to fight the battles, 
and do all the other dirty works, of the French and Spanish 
princes. " Agents from the King of Spain, the King of Por- 
tugal, and the Prince of Conde were contracting for those 
brave fellows, who were treated like slaves in their native 
land, and if they dared resist, branded with the foul name of 
rebels. In May, 1652, Don Eiccardo White shipped 7,000 
men for the King of Spain ; in September Colonel Mayo col- 
lected 3,000 more ; Lord Muskery took 5,000 to Poland, and 
in 1654 Colonel Dwyer went to serve the Prince de Conde with 
3,000 men." (Miss Cusack's " History of Ireland," p. 508.) 
Thus, the depopulation of Ireland was the aim and purpose 
from the outset, of the Government and its Irish garrison, the 
landlords ; and this state of things continues unchanged to 
this day. Emigration was hateful to the emigrant, who, cast 
upon the highways of his country, was reluctantly compelled 
to accept it, and it was, and is, a burden to other countries 
who were and are compelled to support the helpless victims. 
America has been under the expense of feeding and clothing 
the beggars of England, in order that plundering landlords 
might have undisturbed leisure to lavish in riotous luxury, 
the extensive fortunes by which the tenantry were rendered 
paupers. If the Federal Government consulted its own 
interests, it would prohibit pauper emigration, and as often 
as such a law was violated, would reship the emigrants back 
to the estate whence they ivere ejected. Sucha measure could 
not fail to check the pauperizing of the Irish • peasantry by 
their merciless landlords. These are sensitive to the pres- 
sure of public opinion, and many of them are far from being 



52 

dead to the dread responsibility of seeing human beings die 
on their estates. If the wretched pauper emigrants — use- 
less to this country — were returned to the doors of those who 
had cast thenn out on the highways, the result would be a 
reaction of wholesome sympathy for the oppressed. The 
landlords would see the wisdom of " Parnellism," and would 
sell their estates to the Government, to be given in fee simple 
to the " tillers of the soil." In this way America, while 
ridding herself of taxes she ought not to bear, would con- 
tribute to the abolition of Irish landlordism, from which 
she has much to lose and absolutely nothing to gain. The 
coercive measures for the starving out of the Irish peasantry 
prove the insincerity of the plea of emigration. When- 
ever, as in 1826, the landlords were beaten by the peo- 
ple at the hustings, their organ, the " Evening Mail," 
sounded the war-whoop of " Extermination." " It was the 
Protestant lords of the soil that made those free-holds, and 
they can unmake them." Then came an onslaught of per- 
secution which had been so planned as to utterly wipe out 
the cottier tenantry of the country " in seven years." 
Hearths were deserted, hovels unroofed, villages left without 
a single inhabitant, and millions, worn and attenuated by 
want and disease, dropped dead in the ditches. Who de- 
vised the " Coercion Bill ? " "A measure so mischievous 
could only originate in the fiendish malignity of the lords. 
" In that rigorous measure, the malice of the Algerine was 
united with the oppression of the Insurrection Act. Like 
the one, it suppressed all political associations ; like the 
other, it made prisoners of the peasantry — shut up all human 
habitations as proclaimed from sunset to sunrise. It pro- 
hibited political meetings of every kind, assembled under 
whatever pretext, petitioning or anything else ; it set aside 
the ordinary tribunals of justice, and established in their 
place the Draconian cruelty of marshal law. It violently 
broke open in the dead of night the peaceable dwelling of the 
unsuspecting peasant, and poured the armed myrmidons of 
insolent and licentious authority into the secluded chambers 
of domestic privacy, condemning to transportation the in- 
mates who happened to be abroad. In the long history of 
British oppression — unmatched in atrocity in the annals of 



53 

mankind — an act more sweeping, tyrannical, and merciless 
had never been framed." (" Life and Times of O'Connell," 
O'Keefe, vol. 2, p. 555.) But the men who framed this satanic 
edict, at the suggestion of the King's " brutal and bloody " 
speech, were Irish landlords, some of them still living, all of 
them ruling in their heirs, who screened their infamy under 
the specious pretext of " wholesome emigration." The ban- 
ishment of the cottier farmers has ever been the delight of 
the Irish landlord. The growth of the people, which all 
political writers and thinkers hold to be a true index of 
national prosperity, was to them a grave and serious calamity. 
" The encouragement," says Lord Dunraven, " of an excess 
of population is the greatest sin any man can commit, or the 
greatest mistake he can make." This abominable theory, 
rejected by all received authorities on political economy, is 
the logical sequence of the impious assumption that " Provi- 
dence created landlords to keep down population." 

There are two sorts of emigration needed for Ireland, and 
the sooner they are initiated the better for that country, for 
England, and for America. The first is the exportation of the 
landlords into respectable citizenship, where they may be 
spared the anguish of discomfiture superinduced by them- 
selves. By a judicious employment of their wealth, expe- 
rience and attainments they might increase the prosperity of 
their unhappy country. In the cultivation of habits of indus- 
try and sobriety they would discover the delightful charm of 
novelty, and would develop resources and originate enterprises 
which, besides rendering them benefactors to mankind, would 
secure them a more prominent niche in the temple of fame 
than is likely to be won by elegant leisure, aimless dissipation, 
or the stupid routine of an hereditary manor house. The 
metropolis of Ireland affords them, those of them that are 
Irish, ample fields of employment for intelligence and capital. 
That beautiful city has never recovered from the crushing 
effects of the Union. Its revival could be speedily effected by 
the intelligent co-operation of the Irish landlords ; and the 
expenditure of their revenues, while enriching the commercial 
classes and giving a new impulse to manufactures, would 
cause themselves to be regarded as the saviors of the nation 
and the fathers of the people. Worlds of mischief would 



54 

vanish from the midst of the agricultural classes with the 
disappearance of the landlords. The seething gulf of separa- 
tion, which now divides the tenant from his hated and almost 
unknown master, would be permanently bridged over. Class 
distinctions would cease to be offensive ; strife and hate and 
servile fear would be succeeded by contentment, peace and 
mutual respect. The bailiff, the process-server, the land- 
jobber, the racking agent would no longer stalk about as sym- 
bols of evil to the depressed cottiers, but, on the contrary, 
would awaken to the degradation of having to subsist by 
hounding down one class for the aggrandizement of another. 
Live and let live, do as you would be done by, will be the 
golden rule. Then may the Eodus be sounded, and the ban- 
ished Irish people, scattered through the mountains and by 
the seaboard, and hidden among the rocky recesses of Conne- 
mara, be led back to the land of their fathers. The sunny 
valleys of Munster and the rich plains of Leinster will teem 
again with a dense and happy population. Ireland will cast 
away all sorrow and enter upon a new existence, and soon 
send America and the world, not ghastly bands of tearful 
beggars, but brilliant scholars, intellectual giants, and 
apostles of peace and truth. This is the second emigration, 
from the mountains to the valleys, from the wild morasses to 
the fertile plains, and there is plenty of room and plenty of 
need for it within the circumference of Ireland itself. 

It is ingeniously alleged by the advocates of emigration, 
that the fortunes of those who remain are considerably 
ameliorated by the "thinning" process of sending away the 
superfluous population. That is quite true as to the land- 
lords, but as to the tenantry it is utter sophistry. The plan 
has had ample time to bear fruit, but it has borne sharper 
thorns instead. If emigration could benefit Ireland, it ought 
to have done so before this ; but the condition of the Irish 
people is worse at this day than it was when emigration began- 
It is also affirmed that the land is improved and its value 
enhanced by emigration. The reverse is the common teach- 
ing of all political economists, and they are sustained by the 
evidence of facts. I subjoin two extracts from the Irish 
Times of Jan. 31, 1880. The first goes to show that, after 
millions of Irishmen have emigrated, those who remain are 



55 

struggling for a subsistence, and compelled to pay rents 
exceeding the value of the produce of their holdings. The 
second illustrates the depreciation of the land itself, confirm- 
ing the opinion that emigration is the ruin of Ireland, and 
tends to make the country a wilderness. 

" An unusual application was made on Monday to the 
Recorder of Galway, on the hearing of ejectments brought 
for non-payment of rent against a number of tenants on a 
Galway estate. Counsel for the tenants said that he would 
raise no objection to the decrees, but asked that execution 
should be stayed until such time as the tenants' claims for 
disturbance should have been heard. The novelty of the 
application took the judge somewhat by surprise, and at the 
outset he seemed disinclined to think that there could be any 
claim for disturbance when the ejectments were for non-pay- 
ment. Counsel fortified his argument by reference to the 
ninth section of the Act of 1870, by which it is enacted that 
the Court might, if it thought fit, try the ejectment for non- 
payment of rent as a disturbance. " In case of any tenancy 
of a holding held at an annual rent not exceeding £15, the 
Court shall certify that the non-payment of rent causing evic- 
tion has arisen from the rent being an exorbitant rent." 
This claiise applied exactly to the case before the Recorder, 
to whom the power of staying proceedings is given by the 
fifteenth section, which says that in cases of decrees of 
ejectment it shall be competent for the judge to grant such 
stay of execution as may seem proper to him under the cir- 
cumstances. A memorial was presented by the tenants to the 
law agent, and it is only proper to observe that the document 
was one to which no exception was taken. It set forth that 
the rents were more than the value receivable from the crops, 
double the Poor Law valuation, and in excess of what was 
paid under a former landlord. They amply acknowledged 
the right of the owner of the soil to get his rents, but could 
do no more than offer a half-year's rent, scraped together with 
difficulty, and begged to be released from the costs of the 
proceedings. Counsel urged that the tenants were entitled 
to, and at the Land Sessions would probably receive, seven 
years' rent as compensation, and that the arrears of rent and 
legal expenses due might be deducted by the landlord. " If 
the plea was accepted on the part of the tenants, justice would 
be done to both parties. Even though they had the right to 
redeem, they would find it impossible to pay arrears and 
legal expenses, so that the forfeiture of the right, through 
being granted stay of execution, would be in no sense 
detrimental, as they could make nothing out of the holdings 



56 

owing to the high rent." Finally the Recorder granted stay 
of execution until one week after the nest Land Sessions." 

" The.depreciation in the value of landed property in Ireland 
has been most remarkably illustrated by an application made 
to the Master of the Rolls. The applicant requested leave to 
surrender a leasehold interest in a mansion, demesne lands, 
and agricultural holding situated in the County Galway. In 
December, 1877, his lordship had directed that the interest 
should be sold in the Landed Estates Court, and in pursuance of 
that order it had been put up for sale. There were, however, 
no bidders, and when advertisements were issued for private 
tenders a similar result ensued, in consequence, according to 
the affidavits filed in support of the motions, of the agitation 
prevailing in the country. Meanwhile the head-rent was 
falling into arrear, and no rents were coming in from the 
tenants. Actions brought against the latter failed to enforce 
payment of their obligations, so that the interest in the lease 
had become almost worthless. Though the tenants refused 
to pay, it is certain that their refusal was not due to inability, 
as two of them offered to buy their holdings during the pro- 
gress of the sale in the Landed Estates Court. The represent- 
ative of the original leaseholder has completely lost an inter- 
est of the value of XI, 000. When will it come home to the 
minds of those who are responsible for this state of things that 
the wealth of a country consists in the wealth of its individual 
inhabitants, and that the nation is directly injured by the 
impoverishment of any single member of the community ? " 

If the Western States have undeniable attractions for the 
Irish peojne, it is equally certain that what is wanted at home 
is also needed here — an internal emigration. Thousands of 
Irishmen in the eastern cities are huddled together in over- 
crowded tenements, or in shanties but one step removed from 
the Irish hovel or mud cabin. They are located in wild, 
unfrequented suburban districts, in sunken lots, or marshy 
swamps, or frowning rocks, where goats and donkeys roam 
about unmolested. It will be quite time enough to supplement 
this numerous class of Irish emigrants by fresh accessions 
when the depopulated lands of Ireland shall have been 
settled, and its waste lands reclaimed. 

The following observations, of the Governor of Con- 
necticut, will commend themselves to the impartial reader. 
Too much care_cannot be taken to avoid exaggeration in offer- 
ing inducements to emigrants and settlers to go West, more 



57 

especially when there is question of importing them from the 
land of their birth and its endearing associations : — 

" That so many young men from New England do go to the 
West for homes, seems to me the result of misinformation or 
of wrong theories of life. Why should any young man from 
these country towns of ours go to the far West to live ? In 
almost any of these towns there are good schools. Here are 
churches, and the social advantages which these give : post- 
offices and a frequent mail ; all the conveniences afforded by 
having physicians, tradesmen and mechanics within easy 
reach ; indeed, all the good and convenient things which 
result from a long-established and a well-regulated social 
organization. Why leave all these ? What compensating ad- 
vantages are there in the West, especially to a man who 
wishes to have the comforts of a home, to rear and train up 
children to an honorable and useful citizenship ? There can 
be none ! Certainly none worthy of being named. The 
reasons most often urged are the cheapness of land and the 
lightness of taxation. In these particulars I am quite confi- 
dent that no material advantages can be gained at the West. 
The price of improved farms — that is, farms with buildings, 
fruit trees, fences, water and the like — is as small in many 
parts of Connecticut as in the West. In respect to taxation, 
many places in the West are more heavily burdened. Take, 
for instance, the parts where the towns and counties have 
been bonded to build railroads, &c. If any man and his wife 
here starting life on a farm, will put forth the same degree of 
industry that would be required on a farm in any part of the 
West ; if they will live with the same economy, will undergo 
the same fatigue and suffer the same self-denial, will wear no 
better dress, will indulge in no more amusement ; in other 
words, if they will live here as they would be compelled to 
live there, they can certainly build up a fortune here much 
more readily than there." 

The landlords will find a desirable investment for capital 
in the extensive territories of the West, together with the 
classic distinction of being founders of cities ; while their 
cultured taste for sport will be satiated with the endless 
variety of adventure incidental to life on the prairies. But 
the Irish cottiers, little suited for gigantic enterprises by 
centuries of privation, will discover congenial bliss in develop- 
ing the agricultural resources of Kildare, and Meath, and 
Limerick, and Tipperary. Cuique snum. 



58 



VI. 



Parnell and the Irish Landlords. 

" Princes and lords may flourish or may fade, 
A breath can make them as a breath has made ; 
But a bold peasantry, a country's pride, 
When once destroyed can never be supplied." 

" If a house be on fire it behooves all in the neighborhood 
to run with buckets to quench it, but the owner is sure to be 
undone first." That is the sense of alarm under which Irish 
landlords come to crave for mercy at the hands of America. 
It is an event without precedent in our history, but everything 
has a beginning. Perhaps the most melancholy and depress- 
ing record of effete and worthless humanity is the history of 
the British peerage. " Pshaw !" said Dr. Doyle, after his 
examination in the Lords, "Such silly questions as they put. 
I think in all my life I never encountered such a parcel of old 
fools." One hundred years before the time of J. K. L., the 
witty Dean of St. Patrick's had found the peerage and aris- 
tocracy equally stupid and unprogressive, knocking their 
heads needlessly against all measures calculated to benefit 
the people and uphold the true interests of the Crown. 

" Ye paltry underlings of State ; 

" Ye officers who love to prate ; 

" Ye rascals of inferior note, 

" Who for a dinner sell a vote ; 

' ' Ye pack of pensionary 2)<>n's, 

" Whose fingers itch for writer's ears ; 

" Ye bishops far removed from saints, 

" Why all this rage — why these complaints V 

" Why so sagacious in your guesses — 

" Why against printers all this noise — 

" This summoning of blackguard boys ? 

" Your efts and tees, your ars and esses ? 

" Take my advice, to make you safe, 

" I know a shorter way by half — 

" The point is plain — remove the cause.'' 



59 

If this advice had boon taken, our age would not have wit- 
nessed the humiliating spectacle of Irish landlords going 
down on their knees at the bar of American public opinion, 
striking their breasts and compunctiously exclaiming, 
" Through my fault, through my fault, through my exceeding- 
great fault." A drowning man will grasp at anything, and 
British nobles, feeling the ground slipping from under their 
feet, run back here to us " vile Yankee rebels," who a few 
years ago tossed their flag and their army into our bay, and 
beg us to save them from Parnell. " Save us, we perish." 
Let us examine their escutcheon. 

The Irish landlords and aristocracy are responsible for the 
present distress and all the past misrule of their unhappy 
country. They have traditionally opposed the legitimate 
aspirations of the people and persecuted those who encour- 
aged them, espoused their interests, and fought for the recog- 
nition of their rights. But that is not all. The landlords 
desired and energetically struggled for the utter extermina- 
tion of the Irish cottiers, positively in other days, negatively 
or vicariously in our own time. Before the famine of '47, 
for instance, they opposed every anticipatory measure sug- 
gested for the relief of the peasantry, such as the division of 
their estates into small freeholds, whose owners would thus 
be encouraged t'j crop their land with a greater variety of 
produce, and so hinder the impoverishing of the soil. Long- 
before that famine came, it had been proved in a debate in 
the House of Commons that " the want of small landed pro- 
prietors," "the increase of large estates," and "the loss sus- 
tained by the small tenants from inclosures and partitions of 
common lands, in which the wealthy proprietors get almost 
all, while the poorer can hardly ever formally substantiate 
their rights," were causes immediately leading to increased 
pauperism. (See Hansard, passim.) But instead of regret- 
ting, the landlords delighted in this, and delight in it still. 
" It is," says Bishop Gillooly, " a matter of unhappy notoriety 
that in Connemara, and in other places that I could name, 
advantage is being taken of the destitution of the small 
holders to evict them and get rid of them ; and a conviction 
prevails amongst the peasantry in every part of the destitute 
districts that now, as in 1847, the landlords are anxious to 



60 

force them into the workhouse in order to level their cabins 
and free themselves from further liability for their support." 
(Oath. Review, N. Y., Feb. 7, 1880.) With this testimony of 
an Irish Catholic Bishop we find a Scottish Protestant Pro- 
fessor in full harmony. " Among the acts of baseness branding 
the English character in their blundering pretense of govern- 
ing Ireland, not the least was the practice of confiscating the 
land which, by brehon law, belonged to the people, and giving 
it, not to honest resident cultivators (which might have been a 
politic sort of theft), but to cliques of greedy and grasping- 
oligarchs, who did nothing for the country which they had 
appropriated but suck its blood in the name of rent, and 
squander its resources under the name of pleasure, and 
fashion, and courtliness, in London." (Prof. Blackie, Contemp. 
Review.) This selfish clique have always been distinguished 
for their ostentatious support of the British Government, but 
in reality they were its worst enemies. Heedless of thought- 
fulness and all the winning arts of conciliation, they alienated 
the husbandry of their estates both from themselves and the 
sovereign, and are the responsible authors of that proverbi- 
ally bitter hatred and thirst for revenge which the very name 
of England everywhere evokes in the breast of the average 
Irishman. So that England may truly say of the Irish land- 
lords, " Save me from my friends." These beaiitiful words 
are as applicable at this day as when written by Goldsmith : 

" Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen who survey 
The rich man's joy increase, the poor's decay. 
"Tis yours to judge how wide the limits stand 
Between a splendid and a happy land. 
Proud swells the tide with loads of frighted ore, 
And shouting folly hails them from her shore ; 
Hoards e'en beyond the miser's wish abound, 
And rich men flock from all the world around. 
Yet count our gains. This wealth is but a name 
That leaves our useful products still the same. 
Not so the loss. This man of wealth and pride 
Takes up a space that many poor supplie'd : 
Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds, 
Space for his horses, equipages and hounds ; 
The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth 
Has robbed the neighboring fields of half their growth : 
His seat where solitary sports are seen, 
Indignant spurns the cottage from the green ; 
Around the world each needlul product flies, 
For all the luxuries the world supplies. 



61 

While thus the land adorn'd, for pleasure, all 
In barren splendor feebly waits the fall." 

" Thus fares the land, by luxury betray'd 
In nature's simplest charms at first array'd, 
But verging to decline, its splendors rise 
Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise ; 
While, scourged by famine from the smiling land, 
The mournful peasant leads his humble band ; 
And while he sinks, without one arm to save, 
The country blooms, a garden and a grave." 

If the Irish landlords had limited their guilty career to 
indifference for the welfare of their tenantry, or disregard of 
serious pursuits and occupations, or even excessive dissipa- 
tion and licentiousness familiar to their entire neighborhood, 
it could be alleged in their defense that all men have their 
faults, and landlords, like other people, should be allowed to 
mind their own business. But history arraigns them for 
crimes of a far more nefarious character. They framed the 
penal laws, unequalled by the most sanguinary edicts of Imper- 
ial Rome. They ranged themselves in serried phalanx against 
every effort at legislative redress, and voted and planned with 
murderous intent the professional ruin, and even the stealthy 
massacre of those who strove to break the chains of the en- 
slaved cottiers. Who are answerable to God and man for the 
chronic discontent and disaffection of the Irish people ? 
Who have kindled the flames of rebellion, and, like Nero, 
laid the guilt at the door of those whom they caused to be 
swallowed up in the conflagration ? Who have thrown the 
torch of discord among the united peasantry, and bribed 
them to outbid, and thus unhouse one another? Who have 
sold the Parliament of the nation, and crushed out its indus- 
tries, and subjugated the people by such ingenious devices 
of cruelty that their perverted reason regarded law and order 
as monsters, to be held in detestation ? The despotic land- 
lords, the indolent aristocracy, the fawning squireens, in 
hope of some government clerkship to liquidate their indebt- 
edness. 

The struggles for Parliamentary representation and Eman- 
cipation brought the illiberal narrowness of the lords of the 
soil into unenviable prominence. Worsted in numerous en- 
counters, they repeated their abortive efforts to embarrass, to 



62 

entrap, and overthrow O'Cormell. In him they recognized 
their own sun down. Their venal sale of the rotten boroughs 
for £1,260,000 ; their idiotic pastimes ; their scandalous revels 
and carousings afforded scope for the full play of his peren- 
nial humor : 

" Is there a lord who knows a cheerful noon 
Without a fiddler, flatterer, or buffoon ? 
Whose table wit, or modest merit share 
Unelbowed by a gamester, pimp, or player ? " 

Lord Charlemont had been somewhat popular, and a pub- 
lican at Dungannon, whose place was known as the sign of 
" The Goat," resolved to change it for a portrait of the noble- 
man, and the place became famous as " The Lord Charle- 
mont." But his conduct toward the volunteers outraged 
public opinion, and the inn became the reverse of popular. 
A speculator started a rival place and revived the old title of 
" The Goat," on which the people took revenge by giving him 
their exclusive patronage. The original publican, deter- 
mined to hold his own, and unwilling to remove the portrait, 
which was excellent, painted in large letters, over the head of 
Lord Charlemont in full uniform :— 

" This is The Real Old Goat." 

The family name of Lord Enniskillen is Cole. The first of 
them was the son of a pack-saddle maker in Sussex. He 
enlisted as a common soldier, and by his rigorous cruelty 
to the native Irish was honored with a knighthood. He 
also obtained a large booty of land by which he possessed 
three votes, which he sold for a consideration to Lord 
Cornwallis to aid him in effecting the Union. In this 
connection the name of Lord Castlereagh will ever remain 
at the head of the list. The real name is Gregor, and the 
founder of the house was Eob Gregor, a ragman, who 
imported second-hand clothing into the County Down. In 
a drunken brawl at Dumbarton he knocked out a man's 
eye, upon which he fled from Scotland to Ulster, where 
he peddled dry-goods, carrying his pack upon his shoulders. 
The limits at my disposal will not permit me to trace 
the course of his career, which ended by his cutting his 
throat in London. The Irish peasantry toast the event 



63 

thus : " Here's to the barber that sharpened the razor that 
cut the throat of Castlereagh." The origin of the family was 
never forgotten, and the peasantry called the traitor peer 
" Castle-rag." Amongst the most troublesome obstructionists 
to the popular movement were Lords Eingal, French, and 
Trimleston, whom O'Connell briefly describes thus : " The 
first was a traitor, the second a brute, the third a coxcomb." 
It is matter of history that emancipation was retarded, after 
George had promised it, by the " minions " of his corrupt 
court, the worst of whom was the Irish Viceroy Lord Moira. 
" The truth must be told ; this is Lord Moira's administration. 
He it was who stood between some worthless minions and the 
people's hopes." Some viceroys go to Ireland to drink the 
people into good humor ; others to palaver them into content. 
Of the former class was the Duke of Richmond, whose uni- 
form habit was to go to bed drunk. The reader must not 
suppose that I am giving the opinions of Irish writers on the 
landlords. They are by no means the most severe. O'Con- 
nell, indeed, said, in the House, that he would not believe 
Castlereagh on his oath. Here is Byron's estimate of his 
character : " As to lamenting his death, it will be time enough 
to do so when Ireland has ceased to mourn for his birth. As 
a minister, I, for one of millions, looked upon him as the most 
despotic in intention and the weakest in intellect that ever 
tyrannized over a country." I cite from Scully's preface to the 
trial of Magee : " The English nobility is English ; the Scot- 
tish nobility is Scotch ; the Irish nobility is not Irish. We 
shall explain ourselves. The nobility of England is Norman 
to a man. We do not speak of particular families or extinct 
titles. There may not be now a direct descendant of a peer 
created by William the Bastard — there is not ; but all the 
peers are either taken from the Norman stock or from blood 
purified — to use the cant of heraldry — by a Norman alliance. 
The Scottish peers are the most ancient and powerful families in 
Scotland, heads of celebrated clans from time almost imme- 
morial, and lords of immense tracts. There are many fine historic 
associations which bind them to their country and their titles ; 
and hence the Scottish nobleman is as proud of his highland 
bonnet as of his insignia of the thistle. An Irish nobleman, 
on the contrary, is, comparatively speaking, a man of yester- 



64 

day. The oldest peers of Ireland are those called Strongboo- 
nians — Fitzgerald, De Brugh, Butler. An Irish peer of Eliza- 
beth, James, or William is already gray (sic) with the honors 
of antiquity. In the peerages of Ireland there occur only two 
Irish names, O'Brien and O'Neil. The Irish peers are not 
bound by historical associations to Ireland, as the peers of 
England and Scotland are to their respective countries. They 
are linked to Ireland only by their estates. Antiquam exqui- 
rite a i a tram is the general mandate among them, and is gener- 
ally obeyed. England is the country of the Irish nobleman ; 
it is the seat of his ambition and the scene of his pleasure. 
He ruled Ireland, when he had the power, with a rod of iron 
and a scourge of scorpions. When she was to be bought he 
sold her without shame and without compunction. If the 
English minister gave but the word, he would steep her in 
blood." 

" For a history of this modern Irish aristocracy the reader 
is referred to two unprejudiced authorities, Dean Swift and 
Bishop Berkeley, both Protestants, men whom inclination and 
principle would lead to give a favorable view. The vigorous 
language of the first never exhibits its terrible power so effec- 
tually as when rending the aristocracy, who never built a 
mansion on their properties, nor a church, nor school, nor 
any public institution ; who saw thousands of miserable serfs 
die every day of cold, and hunger, and filth, and famine ; who 
squeezed their rents out of the very blood, and vitals, and 
clothes, and dwellings of the tenants, who had neither shoe 
nor stocking to their feet, nor a home as good as an English 
hog-sty to receive them ; who cried out to the tenant with 
Pharoah : Ye are idle, ye are idle, Israelities, when he 
wanted them to make bricks without straw. Even the gentle 
Berkeley describes the aristocracy of his time as ' Goths in 
ignorance, spendthrifts, drunkards, and debauchees.'" (Dub- 
lin Review. Article attributed to Newman.) 

In England and America the poorer classes of the Irish are 
taunted with habits of intemperance. The truth is these 
abuses " descended to them from the ranks of what is called 
the gentry — a ruined race, composed partly of English blood, 
partly of men of "the pale." As the property of the greater 
part of the Irish gentry had been obtained by open and 



65 

undisguised robbery — disguised as confiscation — they natur- 
ally adopted the wild, wasteful, and licentious extravagance 
of robbers. They scarcely used a sentence without a blas- 
phemy, and went out to shoot each other with as little 
remorse as they would feel in bringing down a woodcock. 
The duelist who had taken down his man was a hero whose 
fame excited envy. If he exceeded that number, and mur- 
dered his half dozen, his name in the Irish temple of renown 
was immortal. Is it suprising, then, if the manners of the 
upper classes were adopted by degrees among the masses 
whom they held in villeinage ? Need we go farther in order 
to learn how it happened that whiskey drinking became so 
general ? (" Life and Times of O'Connell," O'Keefe, vol. I., page 
325.) But these imported accomplishments are regarded by 
the average American as the distinguishing characteristics of 
the Irish. In addressing Lord Whitworth on the vices of 
his predecessor Scully, says, " The English aristocracy sel- 
dom sought for talent as a qualification for the viceregal 
throne of Ireland. They were long in the habit of deputing 
a King Log to govern us. They either sent us a viceroy with- 
out brains, or one who was notorious for the habitual vice of 
putting an enemy into his mouth to steal away his intellect. 
Ignorance, inebriety, or both have been too often the charac- 
teristics of Ireland's chief governors. Northington, Town- 
send, Rutland, or Richmond were distinguished for nothing 
so much as for thirst. Ignorance about Ireland is the bane 
of her viceroys." Hence it is clear that the existence of 
landlordism is incompatible with the prosperity of Ireland. 
For they are at the head, and hold the moving springs of 
the political and social life of Ireland. Whatever is corrupt, 
bigoted, anti-Irish in them is adopted and exaggerated by 
their fawning imitators — the landed gentry and small squires — 
and is through their poisonous channel filtered down through 
the innermost recesses of Irish life. Thus the handful of 
peers are the destruction of the country. Whoever seeks, 
like O'Connell, to educate the public mind, and, like Parnell, 
to point out the popular ignorance in which the Irish aristoc- 
racy, like that of all countries, had its origin, becomes the 
object of their combined virulence, hate, slander, and quench- 
less opposition. It is no secret that their persecution of 



66 

O'Conuell did much to send the Liberator to an untimely- 
grave ; and the present victim whom they fain would wipe 
out is Mr. Parnell. Their hatred does him honor ; it is 
indeed a privilege to be hated by such monsters. Take an 
instance of how they rule over their Irish estates. Lord 
Digby owns some 30,000 acres in Ireland, about a fourth of 
the Kings Co. 

What is the condition of the 4,532 persons employed on his 
property? They are buried in squalor and ignorance. " Their 
hungry and tattered indigence was so profound that only one 
was rich enough to serve on a petty jury." Thus, the "side 
of a country," the population of a principality, were destitute 
of the right guaranteed by the Constitution— trial by jury. 
In a territory comprising the quarter of a county, amongst 
4,532 people, there was only one juryman to be found. 
Throughout this vast tract of land the British Constitution was 
a mockery ! The inhabitants were as destitute of its privileges 
as the inhabitants of Barbary. This was a consequence of in- 
security. Lord Digby would give no leases, a circumstance 
which not only plunged his tenantry into poverty 7 , but de- 
prived them of the benefits which they should enjoy from the 
laws they were subjected to. The wealth of a province was 
often spread on the sumptuous board of this absentee noble- 
man, and his tenantry, as a consequence, were commonly in 
want of food to satiate the cravings of nature." (O'Keefe.) Is 
it to be wondered at that those tyrants should pour a tempest 
of virulent invective at Mr. Parnell, because he strives to 
break down this the most powerful confederacy that ever 
crushed out a people's liberty or outraged their rights ? Yet 
there are Americans who depreciate Mr. Parnell, and call 
him vile names, and accept the picture drawn of him by 
certain New York newspapers ! The reader will be careful to 
observe that I speak not against the principles of aristocracy 
generally, but against the wholly anomalous aristocracy of 
Ireland. There is no comparison whatever between aristoc- 
racy, as known in other countries, and that of Ireland. Indeed, 
the principle of aristocracy is beneficent and most humane, 
for it is simply the recognition of a class of superior educa- 
tion and acquired wealth to guide the current of events, re- 
flect the light of lofty example, shape the destinies and even 



67 

the legislation of their country, and so virtually rule it, by 
the tacit consent, at least, and grateful approval of the masses. 
To omit the ancient aristocracies of the European Continent, 
America, and each large city of America, has its aristocracy 
of this excellent type, and is justly proud of them. Why? 
Because their escutcheon is stainless. They have risen by 
thrift and industry. Their wealth is their own, honorably 
acquired. It is American wealth, made in America and dis- 
bursed in America, benefiting our people, and teaching our 
youth to go and do likewise. To disturb or lift violent hands 
against such an aristocracy would be the essence of revolu- 
tion. Give Ireland such an aristocracy for fifty years, and there 
will not be a country on the globe so prosperous and wealthy. 
To compare such an institution, the Astors, the Roosevelts, the 
Bankers, the Schermerhorns, Aspinwalls, Lenoxes, Goelets, 
Belmonts, Phelps, Lorillards, and hosts of such families, to 
the alien aristocracy of Ireland, is like comparing the 
free-booter, " the tramp," the pirate, and the assassin, 
to peaceful and industrious citizens. America has nothing 
to fear and much to hope from her aristocracy, and her 
aristocracy from America. Ireland has everything to fear 
and absolutely nothing to hope from the foreign aristocracy 
that bleeds her life blood with ceaseless rapacity. And, con- 
versely, the Irish aristocracy has neither danger to fear nor 
favors to expect from the Irish people. " Having the 
soldiers of England to enforce, and the hireling press of 
England to defend its oppression, it can indulge its cruellest 
instincts without a thrill of apprehension." Can Americans 
conscientiously approve such a system ? Let it not be said that 
this is an ancient state of things. It is not ; but the existing 
state of things. What O'Connell said some forty years ago 
can be, and is, here affirmed without fear of contradiction : 
" The system which afflicted Ireland for centuries continues 
to the present hour. If the aristocray do not slaughter with 
the sword, as they formerly did, they massacre by extermi- 
nation. The tory landlords who drive the peasantry in thou- 
sands from their cabins, put an end to human life by the slow 
and wasting process of hunger and destitution." They do so 
at this day, and the one true remedy for Ireland is " Parnellism," 
i. e., the abolition, by constitutional methods, of Irish land- 



68 

lordism. It is vain to reason about half measures, or to look 
to remedial measures from the men who, in granting them, 
would cripple themselves. "A tendency to pander to 
aristocracy was the bane of O'Connell's political projects ; it 
was the rock on which his fortunes were destined to be 
wrecked." In 1826 Dominick Ronayne threatened to carry 
the war into the enemy's camp, and tumble down the peerage 
on the heads of the peers. " I will exhibit how the accounts 
stand with the oligarchs. In the House of Lords there are 
365 peers, with their families, who, in sinecures, grants, pen- 
sions, ambassadorships, governorships, the army, navy, church, 
etc., share between them no less than £283,816, with 205 
peers, Irish and Scotch, including bishops, not sitting in 
Parliament, who pocket the sum of £978,000. Here is a total of 
£3,813,816. Well, how does the other branch stand, the 
collective wisdom, the other link of the chain, the other 
branch of the joint concern ? Why, they have, with their 
families, but £1,215,211." To prevent O'Connell from uniting 
with Ronayne, and, by his unlimited influence and gigantic 
powers, subverting their order, and liberating the empire, the 
aristocracy caved in, became sweet and gracious to O'Connell, 
and said all sorts of nice things about the Catholic association. 
When their point was gained, they assumed the aggressive 
anew, and inflicted on the people the insulting, unjust measure 
of the church rates bill. Let Parnell take a lesson from this. 
Let him labor on and he will place the Irish landlords where, 
at a memorable election, the Beersfords were placed in Water- 
ford, their own stronghold, by their own tenantry. The 
Marquis of Waterford had canvassed for two years, 
spending £100,000. The fishermen of Dungarven, after 
election, photographed him thus : "He was like a sea-calf on 
the shore, with the tide out, slashing and bedaubing all about 
him, while he was himself stranded and wrecked forever." 
Parnellism, steadily followed up, will create a new manhood, 
and a sustaining sense of citizenship in the people, so long 
" driven to the hustings as the beasts that perish to the 
shambles." Moderation in counselling the landlords about 
absenteeism will not do, and, two generations hence, will pro- 
voke a smile on men's faces ; just as we of to-day smile at the 
just pleadings of Judge Fletcher to an Irish grand jury : 



69 

"Is there no method of allaying those discontents of the 
people and preventing them from flying in the face of the 
laws? Yes, gentlemen ; I should imagine that the permanent 
absentees ought to see the policy, if no better motive can 
influence them, of appropriating liberally some part of those 
splendid revenues which they draw from this country, which 
pay no tax, or poor rates, and of which not a shilling is 
expended in this country. I say that the permanent absen- 
tees ought to know that it is their interest to contribute 
everything in their power and within the sphere of their 
extensive influence, towards the improvement of a country 
from whence they derive such ample revenue and solid 
benefits. Instead of doing so, how do many of them act? 
They often depute their manager upon the grand jury of 
the County. This manager gets his jobs done without ques- 
tion or interruption : his roads, and his bridges, and his park 
walks, all are conceded. For my part, I am wholly at a loss 
to conceive how those permanent absentees can reconcile it 
to their feelings or their interests to remain silent spectators 
of such a state of things, or how they can forbear to raise 
their voices in behalf of their unhappy country, and attempt 
to open the eyes of our English neighbors, who, generally 
speaking, know about as much of the Irish as they do of the 
Hindoos. Gentlemen, I will tell you what these absentees 
ought particularly to do. They ought to promote the estab- 
lishment of houses of refuge, houses of industry, and school- 
houses, and set the example on their estates of building 
decent cottages, so that an Irish peasant may have at least 
the comfort of an English sow t , for an English farmer would 
refuse to eat the flesh of a hog so lodged and fed as an Irish 
peasant is." Are the cottiers of to-day any better off after a 
lapse of forty years ? " Again, I say that those occasional 
absentees ought to come home, and not remain abroad rest- 
ing upon the local manager, a species of locum tenens upon 
the grand jury. They should reside upon their own estates, 
and come forward with every possible improvement for the 
country." Have they done so ? By no means. In the London 
clubs such advice provokes jeers from the landlords, who 
agree in concluding the judge to be a madman. 

Let the reader judge for himself if absenteeism is not at 



70 

this day precisely what it was half a century ago. The re- 
port of a recent Royal Committee into absenteeism shows 
that there are 2,973 Irish absentee persons, absolute owners, 
who are the absolute possessors of 5,129,169 acres of land. 
This land is worth variously, let us suppose, from half a 
guinea to three and five guineas per year. Some of it belongs 
to the Corporation of London, and other such bodies. The 
government figures, always below the truth, describe the 
amount drawn annually out of land alone by absentee land- 
lords at £656,000, which calculation includes only some twenty 
owners. According to Arthur Young's revised list, the total 
sum drawn by Irish absentees is ,£2,220,000 a year. The 
Marquis of Bath receives from Ireland, which he has never 
visited, £79,000 a year; the Earl of Pembroke draws £37,000; 
the Marquis of Landsdowne, £34,000 a year from Kerry alone ; 
Lord Fitzwilliam, £47,000 from Wicklow alone ; Sir Richard 
Wallace, a resident of Paris, £74,000 a year from Connemara, 
and the Duke of Devonshire £34,000 from two Irish estates, 
which he scarcely ever visits. What equivalent does Ireland 
receive ? Absolutely nothing. This is the great evil to which 
the true antidote is Parnellism — abolish the landlords. On 
their account decay is visible in the towns and cities of 
Ireland ; exhaustion impoverishes the land, while a few 
months ago were seen the awful sights of a woman walking 
forty miles to a poor-house with her child starving in her 
arms, and sixty able-bodied men seeking admission to the 
same hated institution. 

It is difficult to see how the frame-work of British 
society would be dissolved by the abolition of the present 
system of Irish landlordism. Similar changes have occurred,, 
in the history of nations, without material deterioration 
of national wealth or glory. In England alone there is 
abundance of precedent, both in remote and recent times. 
In the civil war of the barons, historic houses changed 
names and fortunes. In the wars between the houses of 
York and Lancaster, the nobility and gentry seem to have had 
nothing more at heart than their own utter destruction. New 
families were brought into existence and old ones demolished. 
To a political economist, or a violent advocate of the status 
quo, the prospect of such changes would have appeared ap- 



71 

palling in the extreme ; but the result was beneficial to Eng- 
land. New blood was instilled into her nobility ; her aris- 
tocracy and gentry Avere recuperated and placed on a more 
solid basis ; the money spent during the conflicts was circu- 
lated at home for the benefit of the people, and after a few 
years of peace matters proceeded more smoothly than ever 
before. 

Within the last thirty years the landed gentry of Ireland 
have brought about a change in their own fortunes and social 
relations which is hardly second to those referred to in Eng- 
land. Without the din or expense of war they have virtually 
annihilated themselves. Their estates are many of them 
hopelessly encumbered. Their thriftless ancestry, or their 
own habits of excess, have so culminated that, nominally 
wealthy, they are in reality no more than respectable mendi- 
cants. They do not receive a tenth of the revenue of their 
estates, and the amount they do receive is spent in foreign 
countries, thus increasing constantly the poverty of their own. 
Will any sound thinker fail to see that it is the interest of 
these gentlemen that the Parnell doctrine be accepted and 
put into full operation? The condition of the people, by 
assuming the ownership of the soil, will be greatly improved. 
They will be more easily filled with the love of law and 
order ; a new life will be infused into them, resulting in their 
increased attachment to the Sovereign, and strengthening and 
consolidating the interests of the Crown. 

But the landlords themselves have pleaded guilty. Some 
of them have secured land in America and elsewhere, on the 
principle that when the house is about to fall the rats clear 
out. If their cause be just, why appeal in its defense to the 
country which tossed England into the seas ? The simple cir- 
cumstance of the British press appealing to the bar of Ameri- 
can public opinion through the shifting medium of the New 
York Herald, was itself a mortal blow to their own cause. It 
set public opinion, on the alert. It not only aroused suspicion 
of the fairness of the landlords toward their tenantry, but 
involved a confession of guilt, and compelled Irish Americans, 
and the American public generally, to ask themselves this 
important question : " Whence comes it that these gentlemen 
who, all their life long, have been calling us " vile rebels," 



n 

" beastly Yankees," etc., should now come across to crave 
sympathy and support at our hands? This deadly thrust at 
landlord tyranny, dealt, through the Herald, by the landed 
gentry themselves, received vigorous support from the uncon- 
cealed partiality which the Herald had the bad taste to 
display with needless ostentation. Its columns were freely 
opened to adverse criticism on Mr. Parnell, to the rigorous 
exclusion of favorable notices. About two columns were daily 
rilled with extracts from every shade of American journalism 
affecting to reflect the " opinions of the press." But in no 
single instance could space be found for any extract laudatory 
of Mr. Parnell. Here again the sagacity of the people was 
quick to discern foul play. The Herald had overshot the mark. 
Its power for mischief was exhausted, and its utterances were 
henceforward accepted in a sense directly the opposite of 
what they were designed to convey. Such has ever been the 
result when, in discussing questions of public utility, partial- 
ity, prejudice, and judicial blindness have been permitted to 
take the place of candor, truth, and sober argument. 

The letter of the Earl of Dunraven was the last crowning 
effort of the Herald to damp the enthusiasm of the Parnell 
darty. It rilled five columns of the huge journal, having 
occupied a similar space in the Evening Telegram, also the 
property of James Gordon Bennett. Leaders were profusely 
issued in which it was fulsomely eulogized, and all New York 
had soon become aware that the ponderous document was 
cabled word for word by James Gordon Bennett. It is need- 
less to observe that the Herald's columns were closed to any 
reply. The majority of the staff employed on that paper 
were heart and soul with Mr. Parnell, several of them being 
members of the committees charged with making his recep- 
tion and mission a gratifying success. They considered the 
letter a brutum fulmen, and laughed it to scorn. Let us see 
whether they were not well advised. 

The following is one of many replies to Lord Dunraven, 
some of which were refused admittance to the Herald : 

To the Editor of The Star: 

The public having had ample time to digest the other side 
of the question, the friends and admirers of Mr. Parnell have 



much reason to thank the press for giving to the light the 
significantly long letter of the Earl of Dunraven. It is a 
singularly suicidal production. It is also a clear mirror, 
reflet-ting truthfully the shallowness of mind and disregard 
of truth which characterize the conduct of the Irish landlord 
toward the tenant. As to Lord Dunraven's claim to be con- 
sidered an Irishman, it may be observed that " all are not 
Israelites who are of Israel." It is right also to say to "the 
practical common sense and perspicuity " of the American 
character, that of all Irish estates, from Cape Clear to the 
Giant's Causeway, the least Irish is that of Adare. It is the 
focus and headquarters of the Palatines. They own the best 
farms on the estate. They are and ever have been specially 
preferred and fostered by the Quinn family, a fact whereof, 
on another occasion, I may furnish your readers some inter- 
esting evidence. 

Next to the Palatine, the special fondness of the late Earl 
of Dunraven was for trees, and his heir is of course faithful to 
" inherited instinct." Small holdings were systematically 
consolidated into the estate and the cleared space forthwith 
thickly planted, the poor holders having been sent to 
America. The value of woodland was a hobby with the land- 
lord and he rode it with a vengeance. The present Earl will 
remember, in this connection, the encouragement given to 
Mr. Madden to go to Adare from the Clancarty estate, so as 
to create nurseries and keep up an abundant supply of young 
timber. It was the late Earl's ambition to make Adare the 
best timbered estate in Ireland. To this overmastering passion 
all things had to yield precedence. I distinctly remember 
the drooping spirits with which, some fifteen and eighteen 
years ago, I saw human beings in Adair making place for trees, 
and quoted the well-known words in which Goldsmith mourns 
" the land to hastening ills a prey, where wealth accumulates 
and men decay." 

The families then expatriated are now toiling hard for a 
scant subsistence in* New York and other cities of these 
States. They have no home, and Adare has abundance of 
timber. 

It is untrue that " fair rent " is all the landlord, and in par- 
ticular Lord Dunraven, wants for a farm. Does his lordship 
remember when Capt. Ball's place became vacant? Will he 
deny that powerful influence and all manner of land-jobbing 
were brought into play in giving it away ? Will he deny that, 
not a " fair rent," but " get all you can " was the terms of sale 
on that occasion ? and it is quite true here, " Ex uno disce 
omnes." 

There are men from Adare in our cities who well remember 
the rack-rent career of Captain Ball, and the burning detesta- 



74 

tion with which his name was received by the Adare tenantry 
twenty years ago. Does his lordship forget that in that indis- 
criminate display of the agent's fervid zeal the venerable par- 
ish priest (a gentleman whose family is older than the Quinn's 
— i. c, Dunraven's) was not excluded, that his rent was raised, 
and that, as a last resort, it was deemed necessary to have 
recourse to the unseemly remedy of altar denunciation so as 
to checkmate the ruthless career of both landlord and agent? 

But apart from the recent mismanagement of the Adare 
estate, the best proof that Lord Dunraven defends a hopeless 
cause, and is cruelly faithful to "inherited instinct," is fur- 
nished by the internal evidence of his letter. It is a tissue of 
falsehood, clumsily tinged with stale wit, and spiced with gra- 
tuitous assertions of quite a sensational type ; and if Irish 
landlords will only be so good as to furnish plenty of this sort 
of article to the American press Mr. Parnell's triumphant suc- 
cess is indeed assured. Englishmen will speedily exclaim 
with Swift, "that no nation was ever so long or so scandalously 
abused by the lolly, the temerity, the corruption and the 
ambition of its domestic enemies, or treated with so much rid- 
icule, misrepresentation and injustice by its foreign friends." 

Lord Dunraven says that "the Irish alone seem to look 
upon it as a disgrace to leave their native land." Nothing 
could be further from the truth. Men of all nations leave, and 
have in all time left, their native land with reluctance and 
heartfelt regret. There is nothing whatever "inscrutable" in 
the fact. It is perfectly natural, given the concession that 
tenants in Ireland have the right to be natural. That is what 
the landlords refuse to concede. "In Ireland," continues the 
noble Lord, "tenants are apt to attach a sentimental value to 
their holdings, which makes them so unwilling to leave * * " 
until at last they have to leave, cripjDled and encumbered with 
numerous debts." Here is an egregious piece of folly. The 
attachment men have for their homes — no matter how humble 
— is rooted in the depths of the soul. It is incomparably the 
noblest of the natural virtues. It is the, fertile source of feats 
of thrilling heroism and deeds of awful sacrifice. Who will 
compare the achievements wrought by greed of power, or lust 
of gold, or tireless energy, or sleepless ambition and revenge 
to the transcendent works which men and nations have in all 
ages dared and triumphantly accomplished pro oris et focis ? 
All jurists and statesmen unite in regarding it as a justifiable 
cause for war. It is the one spring of human action which 
never dries up. It has written in letters of gold the brightest 
pages of Grecian and Roman history. Orators never tire of 
eulogizing nor poets of warbling its praises. 

" Breathes there a man with soul so dead, 
Who never to himself hath said, 
This is my own, my native land ? " 



75 

Our Indian tribes in receding before progressive civiliza- 
tion show the greatest reluctance, break all manner of trea- 
ties, murder our armies and embalm with their life-blood 
their vanishing holdings. In distant regions the Zulu and 
the Afghan do likewise, thus chanting, each in his own style, 
the sweet strain of the ancients : 

" Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." 

It will not do to seek to dismiss the universal evidence of 
mankind as a piece of sentimentality. 

I will now briefly photograph the true picture of an iso- 
lated sentimentalist. I fancy the scion of an illustrious 
house, to the manor born, heir to several magnificent estates, 
in which, both before and since his majority, he has been 
conspicuous by his absence. About to marry a wife, he finds, 
through his excessive love of Ireland, that the whole country 
does not contain a girl good enough or pretty enough for 
him. So he skips across to the Highlands and weds a Scot- 
tish lassie. He journeys through lands and seas, and is at 
home in the whole world. His native hills and dells see 
little of him, though the Empress of Austria finds there the 
very best sport attainable. But he glides incessantly across 
the great ocean ; plows the trackless snows of Canada ; loves 
to climb the Rocky Mountains ; lies prostrate for whole days 
on a hillside in the ranches of Wyoming, chatting with his 
red-skinned guides, or calling the moose, or perched upon 
the limb of a leafless desert tree, perusing an insipid novel. 
The Earl of Dunraven " knows how it is himself." 

His Lordship complains of the want of manufacturing in- 
dustries for the Irish people. Next to the English Govern- 
ment, the Irish landlords are responsible for this. Their 
education, their power, and their wealth enable them to 
initiate efforts looking to the revival of Irish manufactures. 
Their influence too, rightly used, would so shape public 
opinion, and so concentrate the united action of the whole 
Irish people as to compel Government co-operation. But the 
landlords of Ireland are either Englishmen who never see 
Ireland, or Irishmen who see and understand it least of all 
countries on the globe. When they do reside in Ireland, 
here is an instance, among a thousand, which shows how they 
patronize native manufactures : A gentleman of Lord Dun- 
raven's county called to procure some horse brushes at the 
brush factory of Mr. Hugh Hastings, Limerick. Exhibiting 
an old brush to show what manner of article he wanted, he 
observed, " I commonly buy my brushes in England, but just 
now am run short." The trader, irritated, snapped off the 
thin veneering from the brush and displayed hidden under- 
neath his private trade-mark. What was the fact ? Unable 
to find a market in Ireland for his goods, he had been 



76 

wont to ship them in large quantities to England, where 
they were stamped with the English trade-mark and reship- 
ped to Ireland as English work, when they commanded good 
sale as English goods. What have the Munster landlords, 
particularly Lord Dunraven, done to foster the culture of 
flax, the use of Limerick lace, and the world-known Limerick 
glove, or Irish poplin ? 

But we must not suppose that Lord Dunraven' s literary 
skill is exhausted in dishing up rehashed platitudes for our 
American " perspicuity." His Lordship has the astounding- 
temerity to coin vulgar " maxims " out of the plain, sober 
speech of Mr. Parnell, putting into that gentleman's mouth 
words which he never employed. If it be not so, why has he 
not cited the speech or pamphlet in which he found the Par- 
nell " maxims ? " And is it not quite clear that it is Dunra- 
ven, and not Parnell, who affects to play " quack " to Irish 
gullibility ? It is no uncommon thing, in the [polemics of 
the land question, to find noblemen who stoop to falsify the 
words of an adversary ; for they well know that " although 
the devil be the father of lies, he has, like other great inven- 
tors, lost much of his reputation by the continual improve- 
ments that have been made upon him." 

But there is luxury in putting a pet name on one's intel- 
lectual parturitions, and Dunraven forthwith sends his 
" maxims " to the world as " organized robbery." It is a 
pretty phrase, but it is likewise a perfect definition of the 
Adare Manor and estate. Lord Dunraven can see from the 
beautiful castle in which he wrote his pronunciamento, the 
lonely abbey ruins that dot the landscape. Let him ask him- 
self who built them ? Who originally owned the Adare 
estate ? History answers : " The Irish people," whose 
descendants his ancestry impoverished and expatriated to 
make homes for the Palatine and all manner of aliens. His 
Lordship can justly chuckle upon his " inherited instinct." 

The " quack pill " of emigration will not furnish the 
desired panacea. The Irish race, in common with all the race 
of Adam, will insist on living and laboring for their altars and 
firesides. The citadel of landlordism must disappear. 
Parnell is but the " vox populi," and it is idle attempting to 
throw mud upon him. It may soil the fingers that pick it up, 
but it cannot besmear the pure and fearless popular tribune 
who stands clothed with the moral power of two hemispheres. 
The hatred of landlordism is rooted ineradically in the Irish 
race, and the people when left to their own judgment, seldom 
mistake their true interests. The system was founded in 
bloodshed, cradled in injustice, and nurtured with merciless 
confiscation. Its knell is sounded. It shall die by the 
trenchant scimeter of truth, without one drop of blood, one 



77 

act of injustice, or one louder word than " peace to its ashes." 
At the funeral there may indeed be some fisticuffing, akin to 
that historic row in Clare, between the Inchiquinns and the 
Quinns, in which the latter skedaddled and settled down in 
Limerick. But in the event of a muss the landlords will find 
comfort in the remembrance that " if a house be swept, the 
more occasion there is for such a work the more dust it will 
raise." 

Charles J. Smith, M. D., N. Y. 

If Lord Dunraven's ancestors believed emigration neces- 
sary, why did they import a foreign population to overcrowd 
their estates, and above all, why did they select for importa- 
tation a class of people who were unable to benefit, and must 
inflict injury on, the country ? 

Of the Palatines, Swift says in his history of the "Four last 
years of the Queen" that " The public was a loser by every 
individual among them." Again 

" Those who advised the bringing in of the Palatines were 
enemies to the Kingdom " (Examiner, No. 4), and again, " Some 
persons, whom the voice of the nation authorizes me to call 
her enemies, taking advantage of the general naturalization 
act, had invited over a great number of foreigners of all re- 
ligions, under the name of Palatines, who understood no 
trade or handicraft, yet rather choose to beg than labor ; who 
besides infesting our streets, bred contagious diseases, by 
which we lost, in natives, thrice the number of what we gained 
in foreigners" (Examiner, No. 45). 

Yet this class were affectionately harbored by Lord Dun- 
raven's ancestors, who gave them some of the best holdings 
in Adare. In his lordship's deer park fifty families could earn 
an abundant living if he did not hold to the doctrine that 
deer are more desirable than men. 

Lord Dunraven says that " many of them (the Irish) sup- 
pose that there is a Celtic Irish people in existence. There 
is no such thing. The inhabitants of Ireland are a very 
mixed race, composed principally of Celts, Danes and English- 
men, both of which is called the Anglo-Saxon and the Nor- 
man race." In the first place, that has nothing whatever to 
do with the Parnell question. It is not a learned ethnologi- 
cal discussion as to races — how much or how little they pre- 
dominate in the actual agricultural population of Ireland. 



78 

But it is a question of making those who are hie et nunc 
the tillers of the soil its rightful owners, in fee simple. 

In the second place, there is a patent piece of sophistry in 
representing the present population of Ireland as more 
heterogeneous in its composition than that of other countries. 
The Irish people to-day are more themselves than any other 
people on the globe. They possess more of their ancient 
language and their general national characteristics than can 
be found in most other peoples. Let us see how they 
compare with " the sister country." 

In the time of Claudius, not to go farther back, Britain was 
overrun by Roman soldiers. It is not supposing too much to 
say that those successful warriors — not unlike the rest of 
men — did marry and beget children, who thus became born 
Britons. They stamped their own impress upon the country, 
and were a factor of more or less importance in the forma- 
tion of the population. When the Roman legions were re- 
called to defend their own country against the harassing 
incursions of the Goths, the Picts poured down incessantly 
upon the British, who, to defend themselves, were forced to 
call in the Saxons. These reduced the greatest part of the 
country to their own power, drove the Britons into the moun- 
tains, and in customs, religion, and language virtually Saxon- 
ized the entire land. Here we have four distinct elementary 
sources of population in England, anterior to Edward the 
Confessor. Subsequently matters grew still worse. Edward, 
having lived long in France, made French the language of his 
Court. Then came William the Conqueror, who brought over 
vast numbers of the French, located them in the Saxon Mon- 
asteries, gave them great quantities of land, caused their 
language to be used in the courts of law, and endeavored to 
make it the common language of the kingdom. Under Henry 
the Second the change progressed apace, for, having inherited 
much French territory, that monarch divided his time and 
sympathies alike between both countries. For centuries after 
there was a constant intercourse between France and England, 
and a perpetual mixing up of both peoples, by reason of the 
dominions England possessed in France, and the conquests 
by which she extended them. But it is not England alone 
whose history discovers the fallacy of Lord Dunraven's 



79 

theory. Germany has a litany of peoples fundamentally and 
traditionally dissociated. The Italian boot is a net-work of 
gregarious populations, each speaking different dialects, and, 
though more peaceful, they are not less dissimilar at the 
present time than when, under their several feudal chief- 
tains, they waged uninterrupted warfare upon one another. In 
Spain a common creed and a common priesthood, supported 
by the strongest sovereignty in Europe, could not unite the 
internal discordant elements among the population. It was 
necessary to have a mixed liturgy — Mezzorabic — so as to 
meet the conflicting exigencies of the Moorish and Gothic 
peoples of the kingdom. But it is wasting time to devote 
further attention to the oft-refuted slanders of anti-Irish 
writers in regard to the internal divisions of the Irish people. 
They are not one whit more miscellaneous than any nation of 
Europe, and far less so than the American people — a fusion 
of all the nations on earth. In introducing this element into 
his letter Lord Dunraven is clearly not in good faith, and can 
have had no other aim or purpose than to divert attention from 
the main question at issue — the reform of the British land 
laws and the establishment of a peasant proprietorship in 
Ireland. «The assertion at this late day of their life that there 
is no such thing as an Irish race is one of those empty gener- 
alities dismissed by the schoolmen as undeserving of notice : 
" What proves too much proves nothing." 

Lord Dunraven' s financial reference to the "bears" of Wall 
street, and the money needed to give practical effect to Par- 
nellism is exceedingly puerile. The English Government 
could meet the difficulty in twenty-four hours. She spends 
annually in chastising and decimating foreign savages, and rec- 
tifying imaginary frontier lines more than is needed. She 
spent sixty millions in the Confederate war, beside nineteen 
millions sterling of surplusage beyond her share, and which 
she was decoyed by the allies into expending to liquidate 
their obligations. 

By the way, this was about the very same time when the 
modern aristocracy of Ireland were plundering the lands of 
the people, and "settling" themselves down on them under 
sham titles. And this brings us to another of those stupen- 
dously overpowering arguments which Lord Dunraven has in 



80 

stock, and clearly thinks "good enough for Americans." " They 
assert that no landlord has an absolute title in the land, that 
is to say, that even if he bought his land under the Encum- 
bered Estates Court, or from former proprietors, and they 
commence an agitation for the avowed object of creating a 
number of landlords who are to have an absolute interest in 
the land, but they do not condescend to explain how the 
future landlords can obtain any better title than the present 
proprietors possess." Here there is contempt for grammar, 
but an absolute murdering of logic. The Parnell proprietary 
will pay for the land to the last cent or shilling of its value, 
and will justly own it. Have the present owners done so? 
Lord Dunraven does not dare say so, but cunningly shirks a 
question which he must blush to confront. " Is confiscation 
purchase?" In pity I stop here, and am quite sure his Lord- 
ship will drop it with thanks. 

"Is it probable that the mere fact of ownership will have 
any marked effect upon that first blessing of precept to man — 
Will future landlords become frugal to their families." Here 
he fails again to see the "petitio principii ,> by which he begs the 
question. In Mr. Parnell's plan there will be no landlords. 
Is that plain? " Will Irish peasants cease to be bjessed with 
numerous children because they become proprietors?" The 
Irish owners of the Parnell type will not be cursed with the 
bands of illegitimate children which have abounded in the 
neighborhood of every Irish landlord. Neither will the peas- 
ant proprietor endorse the doctrine, born of devils and 
preached by landlords — that children must not be brought into 
the world. The day has yet to dawn when Irish tenants will 
require to be taught moral rectitude by the landlords. All 
else gone, they held fast to that. Early marriages have been 
their rule, at once their only source of bliss, and the principle 
of their indestructibility. They created a family affection of 
inextinguishable power, and its results are the pride of the 
Irish people. In Scotland 10 per cent, of the births are ille- 
gitimate, in England 6 per cent., and in Ireland 3 per cent. 
From which, if you subtract the contributions of the landlords, 
the Irish percentage will be 0. (See Faucett, •' Pauperism," 
p. 86.) Progeny after progeny came forth from the pure hum- 
ble homes of the loving Irish cottiers, and peopling the States, 



SI 

the Canadas, and tlie Australias, reflected back their first love 
in undiminished warmth and strength, in the shape of some 
£13,000,000, to cheer the last days of the "old folks at home." 
(How far would that go toward "bearing" the landlords ? ") 

Lord Dunraven is chagrined because the old people spent 
some of our American cash in clothing their youth, and mak- 
ing them honor the Sabbath by increased external decorum. 
It is an old habit of the despotic landlords to "survey" the 
tenantry, emerging from church on Sundays, or some public 
gathering, and from their dress, etc., to discover whether 
there was not ground for raising the rent. Those who happen 
to be unusually well dressed remain in church so as not to 
allow "the ould rogue to survey" them. Yet this is the class 
of man to talk of movements like the present alienating the 
affections of the tenantry from the landlord. You can count 
on your fingers the landlords who possess, or did at any time 
possess the affections of their tenantry. When the infamous 
Lord Leitrim fell, the other day, by the hand of an assassin, 
£15,000 were offered in vain for information as to the author 
or abettors of the deed. 

Other landlords, besides Lord Dunraven, fell into the trap 
of writing to American papers ; but they belong to the " gen- 
try, who have as many grades as there were steps in Jacob's 
ladder." Their insipid productions are utterly undeserving 
of notice, nor would the rambling document of Dunraven — 
which suicidally admits that " experiment in the way of peas- 
ant proprietary might be tried, and might succeed " — be no- 
ticed at such length, but that his frequent visits to this 
country have made his name somewhat known to Americans. 

It is an axiom among business men that idle and super- 
fluous hands should not be retained under pay, more espe- 
cially if their permanent employment hitherto has been so 
remunerative as to leave them in a position of independence. 
That is the situation in regard to the Irish landlords. Their 
work in Ireland is done, and there is no further need of their 
services. Every novice in history knows what that work 
was. It was to plant and foster among the Irish people a 
church and language not of the people ; and to maintain and 
nurture the growth of those unwelcome exotics by an ocean of 
Irish blood. The plan for all this was the barbarous penal 
6 



82 

code, as interpreted by the landlords. The established 
church of Ireland is a thing of the past. The nursery in which 
the unclean thing strove in vain to ripen into luxuriance is 
Irish landlordism. The former has been laid in its grave 
amid^a dignified silence, which does the Irish Catholic Epis- 
copate immortal honor. Mr. Parnell has sounded the knell 
of the latter in the words of Virgil : 

" Forsan et haec olim menimisse juvabit." 



83 



VII. 
Parnell and the Press. 

*' Every great newspaper ' We ' imagines himself a man of great importance. " 

Mr. Parnell has reason to be grateful to a large section of 
the press of this country. The Irish American newspapers 
have from the first opened their arms to receive him. They 
were characteristically sagacious in estimating the import- 
ance of his visit to America, the results likely to 
spring from it, and the ultimate benefit sure to accrue to the 
tenant farmers of Ireland. It is not to be wondered at that 
such an identity of thought should discover itself between the 
viceroy of the Irish at home and the organs of the Irish 
abroad, for time and distance only intensify Irish patriotism. 

" Caelum non animam mutant qui trans mare volant." 

The independent press of the New England States, and 
every shade of journalism throughout the West have been 
characterized by a spirit of hearty sympathy ; and while can- 
did and judicious criticism was freely indulged, the inhuman 
system of the English landlaws, and the cruel despotism of 
the Irish landlords were vigorously exposed, with incredible 
gain to the Parnell aspect of Irish affairs. But, apart from 
these two schools, there is another large network of American 
journals strongly imbued with English sympathy, edited by 
Englishmen or Anglo-Americans, and representing a shade of 
public opinion either utterly ignorant of or callously in- 
different to Irish history, Irish politics, Irish misrule, in short 
anything professedly Irish. The whole of this section of the 
American press is inconsistent in regard to the Irish question. 
On the one hand, they cite the Monroe doctrine, and strongly 
deprecate all interference in foreign matters. On the other, 
they furnish ample reports of Parnell' s proceedings ; send 
their reporters in his suite, and publish elaborate leaders on 



84 

the probable effects of his policy. The tone of these leaders 
is a subject deserving close attention. In every instance they 
are one of three things : either highly eulogistic, or simply 
didactic, or plainly indisposed to grap])le with the question. 
The first class put the mantle of O'Connell on Parneli's 
shoulders, and place implicit trust in his ability and integrity. 
The second class confine themselves to a naked statement of 
both sides of the question, leaving it, for the rest, where they 
found it. The third class fall back on the Monroe doctrine, 
cite instances in which the Irish have been deceived, and their 
money misapplied, adding some kind words of approval as to 
the immediate relief of distress, or some cynical joke about 
the poor Irish peasantry. In all this there is a painful 
absence of serious and weighty argument. But the inevitable 
impression made upon an impartial public is that the American 
press has damned the system of Irish landlordism by the 
faintest possible praise. The New York Herald, unique in 
everything, has been especially energetic in stultifying itself. 
Before Mr. Parnell left Ireland, during his voyage, and upon 
his arrival in America, the Herald persistently assailed him in 
a series of leading articles which were manifestly inspired on 
the other side of the Atlantic. Garbled reports of Mr. Parneli's 
speeches were furnished, and unfavorably criticised. Inter- 
views were obtained in every section of Irish society, even 
with the occupants of the mud cabins, with a view to diminish- 
ing the Parnell influence. But in every instance these 
malicious designs were frustrated. No evidence has been 
produced to show that Mr. Parnell is not thoroughly sincere ; 
that the means and methods he employs are not constitutional ; 
and that the masses of the Irish farmers are not loyal to him, 
and quite familiar with his teachings. 

But the distress which Parnell had early predicted became 
an appalling reality, turning the tables on the Herald, and 
forthwith the hovels in which it had, a week before, insolently 
and heartlessly asserted that " Hennessy's brandy was to be 
had for the asking," became the object of its new-born sym- 
pathy. Having, in order to regain lost ground, obtrusively 
forced itself upon Mr. Parnell, and striven to bully him into 
acceptance of a position on its Distribution Committee, it 
stupidly objected to his proxy, a Dublin merchant of spotless 



85 

reputation. Since a man's proxy is, minus material space, 
nothing else but a man's self, the Herald is self-convicted of 
dishonesty in attempting to entrust such a person with the 
distribution of public funds. It is difficult to imagine a more 
awkward position than that in which the other members of 
the Committee are placed by this clumsy tergiversation. In- 
deed the whole tenor of the Herald's policy toward Mr. Parnell 
displays an alarming disregard of the accuracy and imparti- 
ality which society justly expects should characterize respect- 
able journalism. With virulent malignity, the Irish agitator 
has been persistently slandered, and the public opinion of 
America grossly misrepresented. Tinged with Anglican bias 
and deriving his inspiration from Downing street, the propri- 
etor maintains an attitude exceedingly grotesque, and which 
covers him with contemptuous ridicule. He is jeered at by 
friend and foe alike, and to no class, perhaps, does he appear 
in more repulsive aspect than to the staff of his own whimi- 
sical sheet. For it is matter of general notoriety that, with 
few exceptions, the rank and file, the energy, enterprise, and 
brains of the Herald are Irish. The staff of that paper were 
educated, some at Maynooth, some at Fordham, and some in 
the Catholic parish schools of New York. They are in the 
main of the same flesh and blood with Parnell, and of the 
same creed with the peasantry of Donegal and Kerry and 
Connemara. Yet through a despotism most appropriately in- 
spired of British and Irish landlordism, they are compelled to 
act at variance alike with their instincts, feelings, and con- 
victions ; and to advocate what they really abhor and know to 
be false. With the Herald man it is one of two things, either 
lie or starve. It is a matter of bread and butter and greed of 
gold. " How much will you give me and I will deliver my- 
self up to you, and betray and vilify my race and the land of 
my fathers ? " 

It is a new version of an old tale. Irishmen in other lands 
are too apt to rise 

"On liberty' ruins to fame." 

Their success is too frequently in exact proportion to their 
self-debasement, and their slavish truculence to the enemies 
and maligners of their country. 

" The torch that will light them to dignity's way, 

Must be caught from the pile when their country expires." 



86 

It must be with bitter tears that the Irish employed on the 
Herald water the daily bread won under such ignoble cir- 
ciimstances. James Gordon Bennett is the despotic master 
to whose fickle caprice they must pay abject homage. That 
gentleman is the fawning sycophant as well as the conve- 
nient tool and mouthpiece of the British aristocracy. It is 
an oj)en secret that his highest ambition is to gain admission 
to the best class of English society. But the one itinerant 
sham, the one social vampire, from which the true English 
gentleman shrinks with instinctive horror is the American 
parvenu. He is regarded with mingled ridicule and con- 
tempt, and this settled dislike of such mushroom respecta- 
bility is only intensified when mere braggadocio seeks, as in 
Bennett's case, to shelter itself under the cover of great 
wealth. Despite wealth, and the influence of the Herald, 
and persistent effort, and the sacrifice of truth and principle, 
James Gordon will continue to be regarded hj the better 
classes of English society " as the best cowhided newspaper- 
man in existence." That is the euphonious and inherited 
patronymic in which he can rejoice, and by which he shall be 
distinguished during his years in the flesh. It is labor lost 
trying to bolster up the doomed system of Irish landlordism, 
by abusing and belittling Mr. Parnell. It is futile and silly 
in the Herald to continue to offer advice to Irish people 
either here or in Ireland, for it is the landlords and not the 
people who appealed to the Herald, and that journal should 
remember that "proffered service stinks." In this sense 
only can the Herald be regarded as the friend and representa- 
tive of the Irish people, viz. : let any person in search of 
truth read carefully all that the Herald says about Mr. Par- 
nell ; let him believe directly the opposite ; and he will know 
the truth as it is in itself. 

What are the grounds on which the Herald attacks this 
Irish patriot with such savage violence ? Because he comes 
to America to expose the cruel land system, by which millions 
of his countrymen have been decimated and expatriated, in the 
hope that a repetition of those horrors may be averted during 
the present distress, and the Irish members of Parliament be 
aided by the independent public opinion of this free country 
in obtaining a constitutional abolition of the Irish land laws. 



87 

Mr. Parnell is not the first, and will not be the last, to appeal 
or purposes of that description to America. He has spoken, 
not to the government, but to the people, who are the right- 
ful owners of their own opinion, and to whom the press of all 
nations daily appeals on subjects of every conceivable char- 
acter. No journal in this or any other country but prints 
daily copious extracts, bearing on the most burning issues of 
all civilized nations. What Mr. Parnell does, the Herald, in 
common with all papers, does in every issue, the only differ- 
ence being that which exists between the spoken word and 
the written. All men are agreed that the former is the more 
powerful and effective of the two. Therefore Mr. Parnell em- 
ploys it here in behalf of struggling Ireland, just as Benjamin 
Franklin employed it abroad in support of struggling and 
misruled America. Is that a sufficient reason for abusing 
him? 

" But he has attacked unjustly the committees engaged in 
Ireland in extending relief to the suffering farmers." It is ut- 
terly false. It is Parnell who first aroused Ireland and the 
world to the certain near suffering of the farmers. In no in- 
stance has he impeached the personal honor or honesty of 
the members composing those committees. He has carefully 
pointed out the political traditions, and the actual political 
bias, of those members in connection with the Irish farmers, 
and the laws under which they hold. He has shown that they 
inherit landlord instincts, and are, many of them, liable to be 
one-sided in the dstribution of money sent by Americans, not 
for this or that set of sufferers, but for sufferers indiscrimi- 
nately. The Herald proves that Mr. Parnell is right. In its 
issue of February 16, 1880, it speaks thus, through its Dublin 
exchanges : 

" This is not the time to criticise small faults of local orga- 
nizations. I have even deliberately suppressed mention of the 
complaints that are to be heard in every parish of Counemara 
touching the local connections of a more august organization 
— the unhappy fatality by which the most obnoxious persons 
that could be chosen have been chosen to jostle the repre- 
sentatives of the people out of power in the distribution. 
Connemara is so peculiarly circumstanced in one notorious 
respect that I feel this slight allusion to a very delicate sub- 
ject is the least that is due to intense local feeling ; but there 



88 

I leave it for the present, recognizing fully the difficulties 
that surround it. I can, however, with the utmost heartiness 
say that the parish committees, as distinguished from the 
union committees, are upon the whole discharging the work 
of distribution with great judgment and efficiency. The relief 
is distributed altogether in kind — Indian meal is purchased 
at wholesale price, for instance, by the committee of this 
parish, presided over by the Rev. B. McAndrew, parish priest. 
Two members of the committee are appointed to visit every 
house in a district and make a return in the first instance of 
the number of families whose food supply is absolutely 
exhausted, and of the number of mouths in each household. 
Upon the arrival of the meal, enough to stave off hunger for 
about two weeks is apportioned to each of these families. 
Word is then dispatched to the head of each family to come 
in and take home his supply. The people are thus saved the 
indignity of roaming about in mendicant and demoralized 
crowds. Account is kept of the probable duration of the 
stock of potatoes of the remainder of the parishioners — those 
who are, as I may put it, distressed in the second degree — 
and according as the supply of each falls out there is his pro- 
portion of the relief awaiting him. The system works with- 
out turbulence, and with the least possible offence to the self- 
respect of the people. I cannot but think that this plan has 
substantial advantages over the one which is followed in 
other 'places, according to which the head man or principal 
person of the village gets a certain number of relief tickets 
for distribution in his village. The suspicion, if nothing else, 
of favoring his own relations, and his exposure to extreme 
local influences, detract greatly, to my mind, from the 
efficiency of the head-man system, while those whom he 
leaves unsatisfied are sure to flock into the nearest town 
clamoring at the door of members of the committee." 

In the Herald of 22d Feb., it is proved that the landlords to 
whose distribution of money Mr. Parnell objects are not 
only likely to tamper with money from afar, but also with 
money from their own Government, given to themselves on 
easy terms, for the express purpose of alleviating distress : 

" Much doubt was expressed regarding the value of the 
Government measure for relieving the distress by lending 
money for improvents. These works have been given to con- 
tractors who cannot be obliged, and therefore will not employ 
the untrained and enfeebled poor for ivhose benefit the works are 
meant, but only the men who can do the best work for their 
wages. The temptation to bad landlords to wring profit from 



their tenants is shown by the following extraordinary notice 
from a Deny paper issued by a landlord who received a grant 
from Government for improvements : 

" ' Those tenants who wish to have improvements carried 
out on their holdings, either drainage, fencing, or roads, are 
informed that upon proper application money will be advanced, 
but the tenant must agree to one shilling for every one pound 
spent being added to his rent, such increase to commence 
November, 1881.' " 

What does the Herald think about that for landlord impar- 
tiality '? and is that the sort of committee the Herald wants ? 
If not, then it should honor Mr. Parnell for guarding 
kind and charitable Americans from falling into such snares, 
and having their alms put into the landlords' pockets, and spent 
in the clubs of London. 

But if the Herald was indulging in one of its Homeric naps 
(aUquando dormitat) when it thus supported Mr. Parnell, it 
will rejoice to find that Bishop McCarthy of Kerry and itself 
are unanimous, whether in sleeping or waking. His Lordship 
(the Herald loves a lord) says : 

" I send you <£10 for the poor. The Government will not 
believe there is much distress while the work-houses are 
empty. The last official report shows that the number getting 
relief — indoor or outdoor — throughout Kerry is not more 
than 700 above that in the different unions at this time last 
year. The landlords, at whose doors the mendicants cannot 
appear, apply the same test. The Government hand over all 
power to the landlords. Money can be had on easy terms, 
l3ut only by landlords. Of what use is it to the poor 
laborers of Tralee and Castlegregory that Sir Edward Denny 
can borrow money for 1 per cent. ? He is an absentee, over 80 
years of age, perhaps does not know of any distress in Ireland, 
and yet the Government boast that they have taken all neces- 
sary means to meet the present crisis, because they gave him 
great facilities for draining bogs and making roads ! Another 
landlord in this diocese, with vast estates and immense wealth, 
is in his dotage. Another is bound to his creditors not to 
raise any loans, and look upon the reclamation of waste lands 
as a hopeless project, or welcome famine as necessitating em- 
igration — his panacea for all the evils springing from over- 
population. I say the Government do not do their solemn duty 
by leaving all means of relief in the hands of the landlords. 
The labor bill in Lord Kenmare's office last week was <£306 
odd ; but on all sides around his estate not an additional 



90 

shilling lias been earned this year so far. Yesterday I met a 
poor man within a mile of this town, who showed me his breast 
covered with ulcers. He was quite willing to work, but could 
get no employment, as he was not living on the Kenmare 
estate. His three little children get breakfast every morning at 
the convent schools. I know the parish of Brosna well. There 
are rapid rivers without a bridge for many miles of their 
course. There are vast extents of unreclaimed, undrained lands, 
for which the tenants pay a rent four times the valuation. 
There is no work, no wages, no employment, because the land- 
lords will not move hand or foot. I see no remedy but to 
meet in a body, as has been done with effect in Cahirciveen 
and elsewhere, and to call on the guardians for work or relief. 
This proceeding will show to the Government that, however 
good their intentions, more active measures must be taken to 
save the lives of the people." 

" But the Mansion House Committee has been grossly slan- 
dered by Parnell and painted in horrid colors. Can you deny 
it? " Yes; I emphatically deny it. He has not touched one 
hair of their head ; nor impeached their honor and honesty ; 
nor hinted anything derogatory to them as gentlemen. He 
impeached their impartiality in regard to the cottier tenants, 
and every word he said is absolutely true ; for many of them 
are themselves landlords, and most of them belong to " the 
gentry," the vilest scourge of Ireland. If the Herald did but 
know whereof it speaks, how differently it would demean 
itself. " England, since I have known her by history," says 
the Hildebrand of Ireland, " has been always governed by a 
party, and that party always kept the nation hoodwinked." 
That is the key-note to a true understanding of the Mansion 
House people, and the Marlborough people, in relation to the 
poor cottier tenants. It is nonsense to talk of Mr. Parnell, 
himself a gentleman, casting any shadow of imputation on the 
personal character, or honesty, or politeness, or social excel- 
lence of the members of either the Mansion House or the 
Marlborough Committee. He has never done it. But he has 
held, and he would be a liar and traitor did he not hold, that 
they are not with the poor cottier farmers ; do not believe in 
fundamentally improving the condition of these poor farmers ; 
do not want to hear of them being made owners of their hold- 
ings ; but do want to do the amiable, " the thing," in appearing 



91 

before the Irish people as the almoners of America and other 
nations, without any expense to themselves, and with material 
benefit to those from lohom they expect their rent. Surely, noth- 
ing can be more honorable in Mr. Parnell — nothing more 
chivalrous, than to carefully and persistently explain this 
complicated state of Irish party feeling to impartial and un- 
biased Americans, who care nothing for such matters, so they 
feed the hungry, so their money be applied directly to the suf- 
ferers, without the questionable manipulation of interested 
parties. 

Hence the practical and excellent Bishop Gillooly says, 
writing to the Mansion House Committee : — 

I cannot close this letter, long as it is, without offering an 
observation suggested by certain local committee arrange- 
ments lately announced in the public papers. The observa- 
tion is — that the parochial or other local committees, through 
which you will distribute your fund, although they may use- 
fully include poor-law guardians, ought to be distinct from 
and independent of the poor-law union organization ; and that 
the selection of families for relief should not be left to land- 
lords, agents, or bailiffs, no more than to poor-law relieving 
officers. 

The chief object of your committee and of our parochial 
committees is, as I understand it, to save the destitute 
laborers, cottiers, and small farmers not only from death and 
sickness by starvation, but also from the workhouse ; to 
enable them tp keep their families together until the evil days 
shall have passed over. Now, it is a matter of unhappy 
notoriet} r that in Connemara and in other places that I could 
name, advantage is being taken of the destitution of the small 
landholders to evict them and get rid of them ; and a convic- 
tion prevails amongst the peasantry in every part of the 
destitute districts that now, as in 1847, the landlords are 
anxious to force them into the workhouse in order to level 
their cabins and free themselves from further liability for 
their support. Such being the case, it seems to me that the 
relief through which we hope to be able to keep those poor 
people in their homes and holdings should not be entrusted 
for distribution to those who are even suspected of a desire 
to deprive them of their homes. {Catholic Review, February 
7, 1880). 

That is a beautiful exposition of Parnellism, w Inch, in a 
nutshell, means " Keep off landlords, and all sorts of official 



92 

and interested people if you really mean to be the ministers of 
' sweet charity ' " to the tenantry. Another version is given 
by the Herald, from the gifted Archbishop Croke, which con- 
tains a world of significance : " He has no special fancy for 
certain members of the committee, whose sympathies with the 
people lie is strongly disposed to question." 

The sum of knowledge with the ancients was to know thy- 
self. If the Herald had studied in that school it would not 
have stultified itself, and disgraced American hospitality, by 
abusing a stranger ; if indeed he can be called a stranger who 
visits the millions of his co -patriots who have fought the 
battles' and helped to build the fortunes of this country. 



93 



APPENDIX. 



It is not impossible that Mr. Parnell's visit to our shores 
may lead to the discovery of information on public affairs 
which Americans are not quite prepared for. He has proved 
the important fact that there is in New York at least one firm 
which dares not transact business except according to orders 
from London. 

The following letter speaks for itself : 
" Messrs. Drexel, Morgan & Co. : 

" Gentlemen — Your letter of February 5, informing me of 
some of your reasons for declining to act as treasurers of my 
Irish Relief Fund, has reached me here. As however you do 
not in this letter, which you have published, give the full 
reasons assigned to us by you for your singular action, I feel 
compelled to remind you of the further statements made by 
you to Miss Parnell in explanation of your course, and which 
were written down by her in your presence while you were 
making them — viz. : 'That in consequence of the controversy 
which has arisen between Mr. Parnell and the Dublin Mansion 
House Relief Committee, and that of the Duchess of Marl- 
borough, Messrs. Drexel, Morgan & Co. have received letters 
from persons in this country inquiring as to the disposition 
of funds sent through them, requiring them to see that these 
funds should be solely applied to purposes of relief, and not 
to political objects, which letters Messrs. Drexel, Morgan & 
Co. do not consider themselves at liberty to show to Mr. Par- 
nell or those acting for him, and also private communications 
from their correspondents in London, the nature of which 
they refuse to make public, and that consequently they de- 
cline to act as treasurers or bankers for this fund.' 

" I think myself entitled to complain that you have only 
given partial information to the public, and I propose to pub- 
lish this letter in order to supply the deficiency. I must also 
ask you for detailed information as to drafts received by you 
on account of the relief fund since your resignation, and also 
as to the disposition you have made of these drafts, as want 



94 



of information on this point is causing me much inconven- 
ience. 

" I am, gentlemen, yours truly, 

"CHARLES S. PARNELL." 

The independence and trustworthiness of the daily press of 
New York on matters of public interest is a subject of vital 
importance. Miss Parnell proves its impartiality to be a 
myth — a piece of information which some of us will receive 
with surprise : 
" To the Editor of The Star : 

" Sir — I inclose a statement from our relief office, which we 
supplied the Weekly Union with, at its special request. In- 
cluding $2,500 from Washington, we have called to our relief 
fund in Ireland, up to last Friday, the sum of $71,900.15. We 
sent a general statement, through the Associated Press, to the 
New York dailies, but they have, with common consent, sup- 
pressed it. Perhaps you could oblige us by finding room in 
your columns for this. 

" This statement does not include a great many sums of 
money sent direct from various parts of America to the Land 
League Relief Fund in Dublin, and of which we have not yet 
been able to obtain an exact account. I am, sir, yours faith- 
fully, 

"F. PARNELL. 

"New York Hotel, February 23." 

"We have attempted this week to procure statements of the 
amounts being transmitted through the principal channels for 
Irish relief. The daily papers (for reasons of their own) keep 
the public in the dark respecting some of these committees. 
The Land League, or Parnell's committee, for instance, are 
kept sedulously from all mention in the daily papers ; yet 
within the past week over $30,000 was sent to Ireland 
through this channel — including Brooklyn, about $6,000 ; 
through Treasurer O'Donoghue, between $6,000 and $7,000 ; 
through Maverick Bank of Boston, $14,000 ; and through Eu- 
gene Kelly & Co. handsome sums." 

The exceptional course consistently followed by the Star 
has placed the Irish people under weighty obligations to that 
journal. Let all Irishmen in New York gratefully reciprocate 
this valued service by making the Star their daily paper, and 
le them prove they mean business by increasing its circula- 
tion to an extent beyond that of any of the dailies. 



36 91 





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